


Sugar Honey Honey

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (Not Reylo), Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo in a Tuxedo, Bisexual Ben Solo, But Not Off the Bat, Charity Balls, Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Violence, Enthusiastic Consent, Eventual Smut, F/M, Human Trafficking, I Won't Diagnose Them But Ben and Rey Are Probably Under-Medicated and Definitely Under-Treated, McMansion Hell, Mental Health Issues, Past Relationship(s), Sugar Baby Ben Solo, Topping from the Bottom, conspicuous consumption, rich people are weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:56:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: Kylo Ren is a sugar baby, for reasons he won't explain.Rey doesn't know how to be rich, as anyone on the charity-ball circuit could tell you.Neither of them has heard the phrase "don't top from the bottom."What could go wrong?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ernzo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ernzo/gifts).



> Many thanks to @jeenonamit for the sanity check on this. All sexual politics and grammatical errors are mine.

The State of Texas works hard to reunite people with their money.  If you are a small girl, and you are found scavenging in the dumpsters behind a 24-hour convenience store, the state will not try very hard to reunite you with your family before banishing you to the dusty grey oblivion of the Jakku foster care system, but if you are lucky enough to be owed some unclaimed funds, it will work diligently to find and enrich you.

This is how it went for the putative Rey Smith.  Upon reaching her majority, and in search of the official paperwork that would allow her to work, drive, vote, and set up utilities in the moldy hovel she shared with several of her former foster-siblings, Rey undertook the research into her background that the state really ought to have engaged in many years prior. 

After only a few weeks of digging, Rey came to several surprising realizations. 

First, she was an American. She’d come by her accent honestly, via an English mother, who was

Second, dead.  That was not entirely unexpected, except that that death had occurred

Third, more than two years after Rey was abandoned and renamed; and 

Fourth, a decade before her distant great-uncle, Ben Kenobi, died intestate and without any other heirs besides one forgotten girl in Jakku, Texas. 

There are never enough caseworkers to ensure that children consigned to foster care are given sufficient food, clothing, or education, much less good families, but there is an office in the capital city of Alderaan that diligently managed and tended the Kenobi fortune, awaiting a genealogical inflection point that would allow it to distribute its bounty.  

That point occurred when Rey Smith went to the Niima county judge to reclaim her birth name, arms laden with smudged photocopies of birth certificates and census records.  After approving her petition, the corpulent fellow remarked that ‘Rachel Kenobi’ appeared to have some unpaid taxes, and that she ought to check with the Department of Revenue.

He was correct.  Rey did owe the state a large fee for the management of her inheritance.  Luckily, that fee was dwarfed by the size of the sum which had compounded under the tender care of Maz Kanata, the comptroller. 

“Usually we just send a check, but you, girl, I think you ought to set up a bank account,” she told Rey, who was relieved to hear that she would not be paying off her back taxes on an installment plan. 

“Can’t I just take the check to the supermarket to cash it?” Rey asked. 

“They don’t make bills that size,” Maz replied, swiveling her computer monitor so that Rey could see the string of digits in the column to the right of Rey’s new name. 

It looked like a phone number.

It wasn’t. 

 * * *

“Where you at, Peanut?”

Rey heard her former foster-brother’s voice through the intercom and happily put her study guide aside. 

“Up in the game room,” she called to him. 

Her house had many rooms. Many were empty.  She bought furniture as she needed it, and she was not used to needing very much. 

The game room was the most fully-furnished one in the house, for all that it required a visitor to ascend the grand Italian marble staircase in the foyer, turn left off the first landing, and go to the end of the carpeted hallway.  Rey had a desktop computer station in one corner and a leather couch facing a large television and entertainment console.  Rey and Finn usually ended up in the gaming chairs on the floor, because the recliners had massage functions and recharging ports for their controllers.  

The walls in the game room were where Rey displayed her collection of signed posters. Mass Effect.  Borderlands.  Skyrim. Games she had played at other people’s homes and could now afford for herself. 

Rey felt most like herself in the game room.  It was the kind of room she’d imagined for her future, the one in which she got the hell out of Jakku, got her GED, got a job, and started living her life.

Rey didn’t feel like herself in most other places, up to and including her king-size four poster bed with the quilted burgundy silk coverlet, which she’d come to hate but couldn’t throw out because it matched the sheets, the pillowcases, the bolster, the bedskirt, and the decorative throw. 

She slept on the couch in the game room, most nights.  

It would have been easier, Rey thought, if she could have convinced Finn to live with her.  She had plenty of room; there were five other bedrooms in her house that Finn could have chosen from, excluding the game room. But Finn was too proud; since the initial frenzy after Rey’s story hit the news media, when nearly every character in the short and squalid story of Rey’s life had come around with their open hand extended, Finn had been resolute in the arbitrary and inflexible rules he imposed on their friendship.

Finn would not live in Rey’s house.  He would not allow her to pay for his food at a restaurant.  He would not allow Rey to pay his tuition.  He would not allow Rey to give him any money, even at Christmas.  

So Rey made what inroads she could around the margins. She audited his university courses—Finn could borrow her copies of the textbooks.  Finn hung out with her most weekend nights—Rey stocked the fridge, or they ordered in.  Rey owned two cars—Finn was willing to ‘borrow’ one.

Rey found it a little exhausting, sometimes, to negotiate being rich while Finn was poor.  

But it wasn’t like she had other options, or other people.

 * * * 

“I found a lawyer for my foundation,” Rey told Finn as he dropped his bookbag and riffled through Rey’s case of games.

“Oh yeah?”  Finn asked.  “Did you call that guy I told you to?”

“Yeah,” Rey replied. “Turns out he only handles car wrecks. But he was super nice.  He sent me to this other lady, Jennifer Namit, who said she sets up charities.”

 Finn gave her a blinding smile. 

“That’s fantastic,” he told her.  “Sounds like you’re almost there.”

Rey let out a long stream of breath.  After the initial shock of her inheritance wore off, Rey became resolute that she would take some large portion of the money she’d neither earned nor deserved and put it to good use.  After a few months of deliberation, it seemed obvious to her that foster children like her were the natural beneficiaries of her charity.

But Rey, more than anyone else, knew that foster children had many complicated needs.  They needed clothes and school supplies and other material things.  They needed doctors and psychologists and learning specialists.  They needed families—and they needed those families, natural and created, to be educated in their needs and their traumas. 

It was so big a problem that Rey could not even draw the shape of it.  Did she hire the doctors directly?  Was there someone she needed to hire to hire the doctors?  If she bought clothes for the kids, how did she distribute them? How did she make sure the clothes weren’t thrown out or lost each time the kids were moved to new placements? 

Rey did not even possess a high school diploma, let alone a degree in some relevant field.  She had set out to remedy that situation, but her GED was still some months off.  College would take longer still. 

Meanwhile, the money in her bank accounts (because it turned out that one bank account couldn’t really hold Rey’s fortune) pricked Rey with guilt each month when she opened her statements and saw that her daily interest could have bought and sold most buildings in Jakku.  She’d taken to throwing them in the trash, unopened. 

Rey’s smile was more of a grimace while she told Finn about all the concerns the lawyer had raised. All the different people and charities and laws her foundation would need to work with if it were to be successful. 

It felt so overwhelming, so insurmountable a problem.  Rey had gone home directly after meeting with Jennifer and pulled her favorite purple faux-fur throw over her head.  She tried to sleep until she felt less like a nervous wreck.  But that tactic never succeeded, and an hour later, Rey gave up, more weighted with guilt than ever.

She was overdue on her GED homework to her reading tutor.  She wasn’t positive if she’d remembered to pay her property taxes. The large swimming pool in her backyard was turning green and she didn’t know what to do about it. 

Rey couldn’t talk to Finn about those problems, of course.  Those were problems Finn would love to have. Finn deserved a tutor and a house and a swimming pool—more than Rey did, she thought.  Failing at her life was nobody’s fault but Rey’s.

“So—where are you gonna get those people?” Finn asked, setting his controller aside for a moment to fetch them sodas from the small corner fridge Rey stocked for his visits.  

Rey shook her head. “I have no idea.  The people who hire those people are like—fancy old rich people.  I don’t know any.” 

Finn cocked his head, considered the issue.  “Can’t you just go to one of those big charity parties?  I see the pictures from those things in the city paper.”

Rey stared down at her hands in dejection.  She had tried that.  She tried just writing a check to a promising organization.  It was true that she then received a very nice note from one of their fund-raisers, along with tickets to their annual ball. 

The actual event, though, had been a special form of torture.  Rey had gone alone, which was her first mistake.  While she enjoyed the presentation, she didn’t speak to a single person the entire evening, sat at an empty table, and spent most of the reception in the restroom, worried she was having a panic attack.  

Her only interaction came while she was washing her hands: Rey turned to the sleek, lovely creature in a rose-colored silk dress, mouth open to complement her shoes.  After a toe-to-tip glance, the woman’s expression turned to sneering disdain, leaving Rey with her mouth still curved around her first words. 

“I don’t like going to those things alone,” she mildly deflected.  

Finn made a sad face at her.

“You know I’d go with you, Peanut, but I’m not sure a 22-year-old black guy from the system is your best wingman if you’re trying to impress the old white ladies.” 

Rey exhaled sharply. “Screw them.  You’re a better person than all of them put together.” 

Finn grinned at her, undeterred.  “Probably. But I’m barely passing Statistical Methods, and I am wholly unqualified in nonprofit management.”  He shook his backpack at her. 

The conversation had gone the same way her thoughts did every time she chewed on the problem. Around in circles.  Even attempting to make progress on it led to those feelings of worthlessness surging in her chest and drowning the small progress she was making towards creating a plan.

Rey tilted her head back against the recliner and flipped the massage switch.  Being rich hadn’t ever been a life goal—she’d never thought there was any real possibility of it, from her position back in Jakku.  But she’d assumed that being rich would solve most, if not all, of her problems.  Now she felt more alone than ever. 

Finn abruptly turned his head to look at her.

“I know what you need,” he said, pulling the corner of his mouth into a lopsided grin. 

Rey raised her eyebrows.

“Kung pao chicken?” she said hopefully.  It was Finn’s turn to order, but unlimited delivery of Chinese food with no budgetary restrictions on the number of appetizers she could select was one of her unproblematic favorites as a newly rich person

Finn put his hands on his knees, leaning towards her.

“You need to get yourself a sugar baby.”

 * * *  

Rey blinked at her best friend. 

“Please explain why hiring a prostitute will solve my problems.  Aside from the celibacy.” 

 Finn waved his hands at her, palms out. 

“Don’t talk to me about your sex life.  And I don’t mean a prostitute.  A sugar baby! You pay a guy—or a girl, whatever—to be your fancy date and walk you through all the rich person parties.” 

Rey’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s not a thing,” she said with some uncertainty. 

Finn smirked at her. “There’s this girl in one of my seminars.  She’s hot, okay, but in kind of a bitchy way. Like a million feet tall but she wears spike-heel boots.  She shot down this girl who asked her out last week and said she couldn’t afford her. She bragged that she could make thousands of dollars just for dressing up and going to clubs with people.  And then some people in class started passing around this website…”

Finn cleared his throat. “Anyway, there’s a service.  For finding sugar babies.” 

“So it’s not a sex thing?” Rey clarified.

“Well, obviously you don’t _have_ to have sex with them...” Finn said, squirming a little. 

Rey put her hand against her forehead. 

“Finn, I can’t pay someone for sex. That’s so wrong,” she gritted out.

“You’re not paying for sex. You’re paying for someone’s time and labor,” Finn told her stubbornly.  “Historically, sex was seen as women’s work, so it was devalued.  By claiming it was incompensable, it was effectively compensated at zero, and the patriarchy appropriated the entire value of it for the husbands and fathers of the working women.  When a fair wage is paid for sex, it redistributes wealth to the people performing sex labor.”

Rey blinked again. “So you’re saying that by hiring a guy to sleep with me, I’m striking a blow against the patriarchy and exploitative capitalism.”

Finn scratched at his stubble.  “I think so. I’m only halfway through the syllabus in my Gender Studies course.”  

Rey still looked unconvinced, so Finn retrieved Rey’s iPad off its charger and pulled up the website.

“I’m just saying think about it.  You might feel more confident going to one of those things if you had someone hot on your arm who was used to being at fancy places.”

The picture he painted was appealing, true.  Rey imagined herself walking back into a hotel ballroom, but this time she had a movie-star-beautiful date next to her, Rey's coat folded over her arm.  She imagined approaching a cluster of people and watching them part invitingly to welcome her in. 

“I…might look at it,” she told Finn.  “Later.”

 * * * 

She did look at the website. “SeekingSugar.com.”  She was half-expecting it would give her computer a STD, but the interface was clean and well-designed, and there was no deluge of pop-up ads or porn-website redirects.  

Rey settled in her bed, the loneliness of the too-bare room allayed by the toothy grins of the prospective sugar babies as she scrolled through their profiles.

It became quickly apparent that most of them were pitched to men.  Older men.  While nearly every profile was coded to indicate that the sugar baby was open to relationships with any gender, the women were mostly pitched in terms of their sweetness and placidity, and the men, well…Rey liked men too, but not men of the small, hairless, and overly-groomed variety. 

After a bit of searching, Rey was fairly certain she had found Finn’s classmate.  LadyPhasma21 was utterly beautiful, in an icy way, and Rey could imagine the boost of confidence she’d feel stepping into a ballroom, shielded by Phasma’s formidable physique, but…Phasma was fairly explicit about the activities she enjoyed in the bedroom.  It sounded like Phasma liked to keep her clothes on.  Leather on.  Vinyl on. 

Rey wasn’t certain she wanted anything besides a party escort from her sugar baby, but she was positive she wouldn’t pay to be spanked and told she was a bad girl.  No thanks.  That sort of thing had come gratis in the Jakku foster care system.

Rey scrolled on. 

She paused over the profile of KyloRen.  Kylo (if that was his name), wore a tuxedo in his profile picture.   He was handsome, yes, but they were all handsome.  It was his expression that stopped her.  On first glance it was haughty.  Prideful.  But as she stared at it for longer than she could explain, she thought she could see vulnerability in the twist of his full lips.  Or maybe she was just reading it in, because it gave her license to linger over the shape of his broad shoulders.  She flicked through the rest of his pictures.  Kylo in a tank top, lifting weights.  Kylo in a t-shirt, climbing a rock face.  Kylo on skis, going over a mogul. 

Rey didn’t need assistance with skiing, climbing rocks, or lifting heavy things, but she supposed the optionality was a fine bonus. 

There was a guilty kind of pleasure to it.  The same feeling that unspooled in Rey’s stomach when she bought fruit at the grocery store.  Rey could buy the organic raspberries even if they were full price.  Even if they were $4.99 for a half-pint.  Even if they were imported from Chile, and they weren’t in season. 

KyloRen was unnecessary. Extravagant.  Possibly bad for her, the environment, and the social order she wished to see in the world. 

But if she cared to spend the money, she could _have_ him. 

Kylo did not list the bedroom activities he offered.  Maybe he didn’t offer any.  Maybe he didn’t have any preferences.  Rey couldn’t decide which possibility was more terrifying.  But Kylo was local in Alderaan, and his profile indicated that he was looking for a new and exclusive arrangement. 

After a few more minutes’ hesitation, she retrieved her little straw Coach bag from where she’d thrown it and found her debit card.  It seemed like she was really going to pay to talk to a man who had listed his profile on SeekingSugar.com. 

At least she didn’t have a family to be ashamed of her choices. 

ReySmith:  Hi.

KyloRen’s profile indicated that he was currently online, but there were a long number of minutes while she received no reply.  Rey played with her phone, glancing continuously at her computer screen out of the corner of her eyes.  

After a length of time, a response popped up.

KyloRen: I thought there would be more of an introduction than that, but if not, hi.

Rey flushed.  She supposed she could have been smoother. Maybe complemented his tux or asked about the rock he climbed. 

ReySmith:  ive never gone skiing.  do you go alot? 

There was another pause.  

KyloRen: How old are you?

Rey chewed on a hangnail. She didn’t have any information on her own profile. 

ReySmith:  19, u?

KyloRen:  This isn’t a dating site.  I feel like this conversation is about to be a big waste of my time. 

ReySmith:  i know but i really am interested. in this kind of relationship

KyloRen:  I don’t believe a 19-year-old girl is looking for a “sugar baby.”

ReySmith:  woman.

KyloRen: What? 

Rey wrinkled her nose. 

ReySmith: im a 19-year-old woman

ReySmith:  are you more into 50-year-olds?

KyloRen:  Point taken.

KyloRen: Fine.

There was another delay, while Rey imagined him thinking.

KyloRen:  Prove you’re not wasting my time and I’ll allow that I’m intrigued by the idea of being kept by a 19-year-old woman. 

Rey picked at a ragged cuticle while she considered that.  She supposed that all that Kylo knew about her so far was that she could afford a $50 membership fee and wanted to talk to him.  Posting a screenshot of her account balance at First Alderaan Savings & Loan seemed unwise.  Perhaps her property tax bill? 

After some contemplation, she posted a link to one of the news articles about her inheritance.  ‘Jakku Foster Girl Inherits Millions’.  The blurry accompanying picture showed her in the lobby of the local bank branch where she’d gone to open a savings account.  She was wearing flip-flops and athletic shorts, and her hair was pulled into three sloppy buns.  Her expression could have also illustrated articles on the failures of the Jakku school system or the opening day for deer season.  But she figured she wasn’t there in her bed chatting with KyloRen because she was a confident modern woman in search of a mutually satisfying relationship founded on respect and shared interests.  She was going to pay someone to be nice to her at parties and possibly take her clothes off. 

KyloRen:  I see.

KyloRen: That’s what you really look like? 

Was he actually picky about his dates?  That made her feel…better, somehow.  Less like a john. 

ReySmith: sometimes i dress up.

KyloRen:  Can you meet me for coffee tomorrow morning?

Rey blinked.  That was soon.  This plan was less than six hours old. But would she be wasting KyloRen’s time if she didn’t go?  It wasn’t like she had Saturday morning brunch plans.  Ever. 

ReySmith:  ok where? 

KyloRen sent her an address and a time.  A coffee shop that Rey had never visited because she still liked the taste of Folger’s. 

She had a date. 

KyloRen:  You don’t have to dress up.  But I will. 

A short pause. 

KyloRen:  Bring $200, cash or check. 


	2. Chapter 2

The coffee shop’s name, Arabica, was spelled out in Edison bulbs.  At ten thirty in the morning, there were no other customers waiting at the counter to be served, so Rey took the time to look around.  The walls and counters were sheathed in white marble, and the area above was covered in charcoal grey chalkboard paint and marked up with the menu. Rey had to spin around 360 degrees to see everything on offer. She didn’t see “coffee” listed specifically among the tables of Italian and French and even Hindi-language beverages, but Rey hoped that the barista would be able to make something recognizable using one of the dozens of mason jars of beans in various roasts, all stacked like premium liquor bottles behind the counter.  

Rey was bent over, examining a pile of filled croissants, when the door opened.  Rey did not doubt it was Kylo Ren; few other men’s shoulders would fill the doorway the way his did, and the slow way he scanned the room and paused on her confirmed it.  Men didn’t usually zero in on Rey when there were other women in the room, and the barista was a vision in watercolor tattoos and tasteful ombre curls.     

Rey’s cheeks burned so fiercely that she had to turn to feign renewed interest in the pastries. But Kylo approached until he stood a hairsbreadth to her right.  

He smelled nice.  Like trees. 

“Hi,” he said, his voice dripping with amusement.

“Hi,” Rey muttered back, with as much grace as she could manage. 

She turned her head just enough to take him in.  He was wearing a black and slightly fuzzy sweater over grey canvas trousers and black suede lace-up boots.  Rey resolved that before he left, she would find some excuse to touch the sweater, so devilishly appealing did it seem. 

Luckily, Kylo’s face was at that time tilted up to take in the menu, and he did not register Rey’s covert appraisal. From this angle, she could see a smattering of acne scars and beauty marks on his slightly asymmetric jaw, and this imperfection had the perverse effect of pulling her in.  He was a real, flesh and blood person.  Not an image on a screen.  He was breathing and alive, and she could see his chest expanding minutely below the stretch of his sweater. 

“I’ll have a vac pot of the Kona Peaberry and a plate of madeleines,” Kylo said.  The barista gave him an approving nod, so Rey just muttered, “same.”  

Kylo didn’t even look her way while the barista rang their total, so Rey handed over her debit card. Which was fine.  It wasn’t like she had expected him to pay.  

The coffee was served in shallow white mugs, and Kylo did pick both cups up in his large, steady hands to carry them to a small café table in the corner.  Once they were settled, Rey fished in her purse for the pink envelope of cash.  She passed it across the table to Kylo.  His forehead wrinkled in confusion. 

“Is this from…a birthday card?” he asked. 

Rey nodded.  It was the only envelope she’d had on hand. 

“Yeah, from my realtor,” she said. 

Kylo shook his head as though to clear it. He folded the envelope in two and shoved it in his back pocket without counting the cash inside it. 

Rey hid her unease behind her first sip of the coffee.  She blinked in surprise.  She typically liked her coffee with lots of hazelnut International Delights creamer, but even black, this was good.

Kylo gave her a small smile over the rim of his own cup as he registered her pleasure.

 “Let me guess, you’re typically a unicorn Frappuccino kind of girl?” he asked without malice. 

“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds delicious,” Rey said mildly.

There was a comfortable silence while they looked each other over.  Kylo appeared to like what he saw, because he put his elbows on the table and leaned in, big hands knit together around his cup.  

“So, is it Rachel or Rey?” he asked.

“Rey,” she said.  “I don’t even remember anyone calling me Rachel. Or Kenobi.  Is your name really Kylo Ren?”

“That’s what it says on my driver’s license,” he responded, pulling a black leather wallet out and passing the card to her.  She examined it.  He was almost ten years older than her, a licensed motorcyclist, and an organ donor.  

“Take a picture of it,” he encouraged her.  “If you’re going to meet people on the Internet, you should be safe about it.”

Rey blinked at him in surprise, but complied.  She sent a snap of it to Finn on her phone with a quick note to avenge her death if she didn’t check in within another hour. 

<?????> Finn immediately replied, but Rey stuck her phone back in her purse.

“I still feel like mine should say Rey Smith,” she told Kylo.  She stuttered when introducing herself at parties.  She hoped Kylo could take care of that part for her too. 

“It’s like a fairy tale,” Kylo remarked. “Your story.  The stout-hearted peasant girl who came from nothing, then turned out to be the lost princess.” 

Rey pulled up only a single corner of her mouth.  “Maybe a Brothers Grimm story,” she said.  “And I might still be eaten by a dragon.” 

“Or turn into one,” Kylo added. 

His gaze sharpened. His eyes and mouth were soft, but his expression was more intent than his posture would betray. 

He is a little nervous, Rey thought. It had the perverse effect of calming her. 

“So, princess, why are you interested in a relationship with someone like me?” he asked, taking a deep sip of his coffee and settling slightly in his chair.  

“Oh, you know, I liked your profile,” Rey said.  “I still haven’t really ever gone anywhere or done anything.  You seem adventurous.  And do you own that tux you’re wearing in your profile picture?  There’s a black-tie benefit for the Alderaan CASA program this weekend, and I thought maybe I could ask you to go- it looked like you were at the same kind of thing before?” 

“I do own that tux,” Kylo replied.  “Or you can get me a new one.  But I’m not sure you understand how this works.”

Rey frowned.  People were always telling her that she didn’t understand things, but she had found that this was often a cover for their disinclination to examine their own assumptions.  

“I think I do understand,” she said stubbornly.  “And I’m not afraid of what this entails.  Obviously, we need to discuss your fee.  But I’m sure I can swing a few parties.  What do you charge for a full night?  The party?”

Kylo smirked at her, propping his foot over a knee under the table. 

“No, really.  I am not an escort.  Nor am I offering an a la carte menu of my time.”

Perhaps her expression betrayed incipient doubts, because Kylo followed up on his advantage.

“It’s not three thousand for a fancy party.  Five for a long weekend at the St. Regis.  Stick my tongue up your ass for two.”

Rey could feel the blaze of embarrassment sweep up the back of her neck and curl around her ears and cheekbones. 

A flicker of uncertainty registered on his face as he saw her expression.

“Maybe less, for you,” he said, more gruffly.  He seemed almost to have embarrassed himself. 

Rey cleared her throat. 

“So, then, how does it work?”  Realizing the ambiguity, she hurried to correct herself.  “Not the sex stuff.  I don’t- you don’t have to do any of that.”

Kylo lifted an eyebrow, but crossed his arms across his broad chest and appeared to think about his answer before speaking.

“It’s like- in a typical relationship.  You take care of the other person, right?” he began.

Rey had never been in a relationship, but she nodded as though she followed him. 

“You understand their needs. You’re generous with your time. With everything you have to offer.”

Rey continued bobbing her head- that did sound appealing.

“So, I understand what I have to offer.  Like you said, I’m comfortable in a lot of different situations.  I’m adventurous.  I’ll take you to the charity events.  You want to learn to ski?  I’ll take you skiing.  I’m a good listener.  I’m…I understand you’re not interested in an intimate relationship.  That’s fine.  But I’m attentive.”

His eyes were a very soft color, Rey noticed.  Velvet. Like his hair.  Or his lips.  Incongruous to the size and shape of him.  His voice was lower when he continued.

“And what I expect in exchange is that you’ll hold up your end of the relationship.  That you’ll help take care of what I need.”  

“What do you need, Kylo?” Rey asked, a little embarrassed at how her voice cracked.  He sounded so confident while he was talking about himself.  Rey envied it.  It was another one of those things that people with money seemed to have: that air of certainty in their ability to occupy a physical space.  It was one of those things that she still did not possess, and was unsure how to acquire.  

He shifted a little in his seat.  “Five grand a week,” he said.  “Plus whatever expenses are involved in what we have planned.” 

Rey waited for him to continue—surely there was more to it?  If this was a relationship, like he said, shouldn’t he want more than her money?

He seemed to take her silence for hesitation but mistook the reason for it.

“It’s for most of my available time,” he said more quickly.  “Those parties, yes, but also whatever else you need to get ready for them. Planning your vacations.  Shopping.  Meals out.”

“You don’t have anything else you have to do during the week?  Job? School?”

Kylo inclined his head and did not quite answer.  “I would make our relationship my top priority.”

Rey looked at him skeptically.  “What else do you want to do with me?”  

Kylo did not offer his services as a bookkeeper or chef.  Thankfully, he also did not detail the other sexual acts that were apparently included in the package deal.  Instead, he asked what she liked to do with her time.  What were her hobbies?  What were her goals?  He wanted to help.    

And that stumped her. Her dreams for her foundation felt too personal to share on what was, she supposed, something like a first date.  And besides that- she had some video games?  Her phone?  A few audited classes?  Who was Rachel Kenobi?

Not much of a person on paper, the records would reflect. 

“I don’t know,” she confessed. 

Kylo stared at her before his expression softened.  

“Maybe I can help you figure that out,” he suggested. 

Rey’s own hands were resting on the table, picking at the crumbs that remained of the dishes of madeleines. Kylo very slowly extended his hand, giving her time to pull away, and brushed the pulse point of her wrist with one thumb. 

“I think-,” he took a breath.  “I think we would do well together.”  He held her gaze unblinking. 

Rey shifted her hand against his until they touched each other loosely.  

“I’m not saying yes or no, but what if this is a disaster?” she asked him.  What if you don’t like me and you can’t even pretend otherwise for more money than anyone in Jakku earned in a week. What if I feel even less like I belong when I’m out with you, because you clearly belong in this world and I still do not.  What if I get drunk and ask you about that tongue thing. 

She withdrew in her thoughts, but Kylo gripped her hand harder.  

“Look, it’s like I’m anyone else.  You don’t like me, you can break it off with me.  But I think you like me.  And I think I like you too, fairy tale included.  In your off-brand jeans that you probably pulled out of a Marshalls sale bin and your five-hundred-dollar running shoes.”

It was T.J.Maxx and $450 (they had orthopedic inserts for her high arches!) but he wasn’t wrong. 

“Why do you- why do you want a relationship like this?” she asked.  He was obviously educated, from money.  He was handsome and polished.  He could easily have a job and a normal life. SeekingSugar.com had already divulged his criminal history (none, not even a traffic ticket), his educational history (some college), and his health (clear of all communicable diseases and with a superlative resting heart rate). 

“Does it matter?  You’re not asking me to do anything I don’t want to do,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.  “Both of us could easily meet someone through conventional channels. You have options.  So do I.  But can we explore this one?” 

There was some flattery baked in there, Rey was certain of it.  But her knowledge that his flattery was bought and paid for was somehow reassuring. It was an honest transaction.  His pleasantries and attention were not subterfuge. They were the objective.  The entire subject matter of the transaction.  

Rey took a deep breath.

“Can I sleep on it?” she asked him.  “Call you tomorrow?  Is that enough notice?  If the gala is next week?”

He nodded, rising to his feet at the implied dismissal.  Their chairs scraped loudly against the polished parquet floors as they both stood back from the table. 

Kylo’s fingers barely pressed against the back of Rey’s upper arm as he guided her to the door and held it open for her. 

Rey had been to enough parties that she was familiar with the way a man would press a hand against her lower back in passing. It could indicate intimacy.  Possession.  Condescension.  

But the minute contact of his fingertips was absorbing in a way those touches had not been, and her arms prickled in raised goosebumps in response. 

Rey edged past Ben onto the sidewalk.

There were only two cars parked in front of the coffee shop. 

One was an anonymous, late-model silver Civic.  The second was Rey’s ’68 Camaro, her favorite new acquisition. 

 When Rey made no move to walk to the next clump of cars, further down the strip mall by the stationary shop and the small animal vet clinic, Ben looked at the Camaro.

“You drive a ’68 Camaro?” he asked, face registering his surprise. 

“Yeah, you know cars?” Rey said intrigued.  Most people their age would not have recognized it.  Rey had loved it since the moment fat old Unkar Plutt first towed it into his garage.  

He shook his head.  “Just that one,” he said. 

Rey was admiring the shine her latest chrome glaze had put back on the slender front bumper, and she did not notice him lean closer.  So her eyes were still open and her lips were still soft when he pressed his mouth to hers.

She gasped a little, in surprise, if nothing else, and he seemed to take that as encouragement.  His mouth opened to mirror hers and swallow the little sound she made.  His left hand circled her right wrist and pressed it to the wall behind her.  His right hand came to rest on the top of her hip. He crowded her backwards with his body until she could feel the stucco of the wall behind her.  

Rey had been kissed before. She knew, in theory, what to do with her mouth. Knew she should do something other than suck in his warm breath playing over her upper lip.  But she couldn’t recall either the practice or the theory as Kylo’s tongue lightly pressed against her lower lip.  So when he pulled away with the faintest nip, he looked insufferably impressed with himself.  

“Why-“  she started, before gritting her jaws together.  He didn’t need a reason to kiss her.  A man didn’t need a good reason to kiss a woman at the end of a date. 

“Just to be sure you really do call me, princess,” he said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kink-shame me @YTCShepard on Twitter!


	3. Chapter 3

“You can’t wear that.”

Rey ran her hands down the cotton sateen of her lavender dress.  She couldn’t see anything wrong with it, and she told Kylo as much.

He scoffed at her.  

This was his first time visiting her house.  The charity ball was that evening, but Rey didn’t understand why Kylo wanted to meet so early.  It would only take her fifteen minutes or so to get ready. 

They had formalized their relationship the previous evening.

ReySmith: <if ur my official sugar baby do I give u my letterman jacket or change my Facebook relationship status or buy you a special charm bracelet or…>

Kylo replied with wire transfer instructions and told her he’d be over at 10 to discuss the party.

Romance was dead, Rey was fairly certain, but she invited Finn over to share a six-pack of canned sparkling wine to celebrate.  He brought her a jumbo package of condoms and a tin of spearmint Altoids in honor of her new relationship. 

So Rey was a little hungover that morning, not to mention dismayed that Kylo did not like her very pretty dress, which had a wide, high neckline that disguised her utter lack of cleavage.   

She and Kylo stood alone in her empty, beige bedroom, which was a terrifying thought in the abstract.  However, it was hard to imagine anything naughty occurring on her enormous burgundy bed, with all the throw pillows and stuffed animals watching.  Rey didn’t even masturbate there. 

“What’s wrong with my dress? I just got this!  From a nice store,” Rey protested. 

Kylo sighed and scrubbed his hand through his hair.  He’d arrived looking freshly scrubbed and carrying a garment bag and a pair of dress shoes.  As on the previous date, however, he wore a simple black sweater and jeans.  

“First, you can’t wear a sundress to a black-tie ball.  That dress is for…a barbeque, or something.” 

Rey frowned.  Why would she wear a nice dress to roast hotdogs and grill burgers?  It would get all smoky.  

“Second…” Kylo stalked closer to her.  Rey’s heart stuttered and she wondered whether he was planning to kiss her again. Her expectations for the evening included a few kisses, but only after she was a glass of champagne or two braver and had a social success under her belt to buoy her confidence.

Kylo only reached out with one large hand and grasped a handful of fabric at her waist.  He crushed it, wrinkling the dress.  Rey thrust out her lower lip in outrage.

“…it doesn’t even fit you,” Kylo muttered, letting it go.  “Why did you buy this?”

Rey spun to look at it in the mirror over her heavy oak dresser.  It looked fine to her. 

“It’s not easy to find stuff that fits.  I’ve got big shoulders and no tits.”

Kylo sighed audibly in annoyance.  “You’re built like a fashion model.  Your tits are fine.  It should be easy to find something for you to wear to a party.”

Rey tried to brush out the wrinkles he’d created and stared down at her breasts.  ‘Fine,’ was about the nicest thing that had ever been said of them. 

“Do you have anything else you could wear tonight?” he asked.  Rey pointed vaguely in the direction of her master closet—through her Jack and Jill bathroom and the linen pantry. 

She sat on the edge of her bed and kicked her feet while she listened to Kylo rustling around in her closet.  

After only a few minutes, he stomped out, empty-handed.

“Your closet looks like a Goodwill donation truck crashed into a state-school sorority house and smells as though the engine block then caught fire,” he said, upper lip curling in disgust.

Rey jumped off her bed. 

“I have other nice dresses,” she insisted.  “The only clothes that smell like that are my overalls from the repair shop.” 

Kylo crossed his arms across his wide chest in negation.

“You can’t wear your junior prom dress to a society event and expect them to take you seriously,” he insisted.  “And seriously, if those overalls haven’t been on fire yet, you should burn them soon.” 

Rey hadn’t even _gone_ to her junior prom. 

Kylo rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, face deeply troubled.  

“Grab your running shoes. We’re going to the mall,” he said.

Rey’s mouth opened.  Going to the mall together seemed like more of a six-months-into-the-relationship kind of date.  For people who had run out of things to talk about and were bored of sex. 

“You want to go to the mall?” she squeaked. 

“I would rather have burning bamboo shoots shoved under my toenails,” he said levelly.  “But this is what I signed up for.  We can talk about my hazard pay later.”

 * * *

Strong words about the mall notwithstanding, Kylo seemed to know his way around the mall quite well. He drove them to the “nice mall”—the one with the sculpture garden and the indoor lily pond and few gangs of roving teenagers in search of sexual partners and baked pretzels. 

He dragged her into three stores—Prada, Ralph Lauren, and Versace—in quick succession.  He aggressively shoved through the racks of formalwear, hangers screeching against their bars, then just as quickly as they entered, they left.  Salespeople called after them mournfully, promising to call to other stores in other states.  Rey was not even clear what he was looking for; most of the rejected dresses and jumpsuits seemed like perfectly reasonable options, and they were spending a great deal of time in a place he professed to hate.

It wasn’t until they entered the Carolina Herrera store that he handed her anything to try on.  He pulled three dresses off a rack without checking their prices or sizes and shoved them at her. 

“Go try these on,” he commanded her curtly.  Bewildered, Rey stumbled back towards the sleekly modernist plywood dressing rooms, her arms laden with fabric. 

Even though she no longer had a clothing budget, Rey still preferred to order what she needed online. This was her first experience shopping in an expensive designer store; the shopgirls and -boys made her tremble with anxiety as their eyes followed her closely around the racks and shelves.  She preferred the law-of-the-jungle mess of a consignment store or thrift shop, and the rush of dopamine she scored whenever her search turned up a barely-worn article of clothing under a popular brand.  

The fitting room of Carolina Herrera was larger than her bedroom at Unkar Plutt’s house in Niima. Rey stripped to her undergarments and socks and pulled on the first gown.  It had a padded, sculpted bodice, and Rey could not begin to fill it up. She carefully put it back on the hanger. 

The second dress was pleated red gauze with a gold chain belt.  It look her some maneuvering to arrange it on her torso the way it had hung on the rack, and then further twisting to figure out that she was not supposed to wear a bra with it. 

When it was finally arranged so that the twisted halter-top lay flat against her torso, Rey gulped in some air. 

“What are you doing in there?” Kylo’s cross voice came through the door. 

Clamping her teeth together, Rey opened the door. 

Kylo was seated on the leather banquette opposite the fitting rooms, leg crossed over his knee.   He flicked his fingers to motion away the model-beautiful sales clerk who offered him a glass of champagne. 

Nobody had ever offered Rey champagne while shopping before.  

Rey picked up the long, umbrella-pleated hem of the dress and took a few steps in to the brighter light of the mirrored reception area of the store.

Kylo’s eyes flicked up and down her form.  

“No,” he said. “Go try on the others.”

“What?” Rey asked, surprised.  “This one fits.  And you picked it out.”

Kylo rolled his eyes. “That color does nothing for you. I won’t pick it out again.” 

Rey gave a half-hearted huff of laughter.  “I thought the problem was that it exposes a ton of-“ not cleavage, since she didn’t have any without a push-up bra “-chest.  For a children’s charity benefit.” 

Kylo didn’t even look at the area in question.  “There will be plenty of socialites with all their goods on display, I promise you.  But you don’t have to show off your body to fit in. You just have to look polished.” 

Rey put her fists on her hips, feeling the urge to be contrary to get a rise out of him.

“What if I want to trawl for the first Mr. Kenobi?  What if I need to bait the hook?” she said, making the skirt swing a little.  

Kylo snorted.  “I’m sure the thrice-divorced orthopedic surgeon of your dreams will be in the crowd tonight, but I thought my marching orders were to get you in with the organizing committee?”

Rey sighed and retreated to the fitting room. 

The last dress was a deceptively simple white tank.  Rey had to wiggle to get into it, and then twist around again to get its layers of silk jersey to lay flat against it.  The neckline was straight, modest, and secured by narrow spaghetti straps.  The back, however, was completely bare to the base of her spine, save for one narrow ribbon below her shoulder blades.  The dress draped her figure before falling in loose folds around her feet.

Rey took a deep breath and pushed the door of the fitting room open.  

Kylo’s head came up from his phone as she emerged.  His eyes narrowed as several expressions flitted across his face in rapid succession.

“Oh, I love that dress!” said the shopgirl.  “It’s actually from the bridal collection, but obviously it works as eveningwear.” 

Rey gave a little choke. “It’s a wedding dress?”

“Not unless you get married in it,” Kylo said, rising to his feet.  “And don’t you still need a guardian’s permission for that?”

“Excuse you, I am nineteen,” Rey sputtered, relaxing a little.  Kylo’s lips twitched in a small smile.

“Pardon me, you are obviously a very eligible teenager.”

Kylo looked down at her from a bare two steps away.

“This is a good option,” he said, voice calm and deep.  The neutral statement nonetheless made her shiver a little—the cold, no doubt, since her entire back was bare.  Regardless of the cause, her nipples pebbled in a way that she hoped he missed. 

He looked further down her body and frowned.

“What kind of underwear are you wearing?” he asked.

Rey’s eyes popped. 

“Excuse me?” 

Kylo made an impatient gesture. 

“I can see them.” 

Rey looked at the bodice of her dress. The white silk jersey was slightly transparent under the heavy store lights.  “…black bikini cut,” she whispered.

“You need to wear a nude thong with this dress,” Kylo said. 

Rey shook her head.  “Not even for money,” she swore.  “I’ll never be able to concentrate with something like that in my…”  she broke off her statement, cheeks flushing. 

Kylo appeared to be suppressing a snicker.   “Then just take them off.”

“… _excuse_ me?”

He gave an elaborate roll of his shoulders.

“Just go commando. That’s what I’ll be doing,” he pitched his voice deliberately louder than their conversation had been.

Rey heard the shopgirl audibly choke on her own saliva.  Rey’s face was blazing red by that point, and she held very still, lest she do something embarrassing, like drool or squeak. 

So instead she tilted her chin up at him, then began to hike up her skirts, maintaining direct eye contact.   His cocky grin faded a little.  

She reached under her skirts and grabbed the band of her underwear.  His smile subsided completely, replaced by a pleasingly poleaxed expression as Rey slid her underwear off in the middle of the store and pressed them neatly into his hand. 

“Better?”  Rey asked, spinning in a circle.  He shoved her underwear into the pocket of his jeans.

“Better,” he breathed. He swallowed, and Rey could see the muscles in his throat move.  “It’ll do.” 

 * * * 

Rey was quickly disabused of the idea that they would go home after finding an appropriate dress. Instead, their next stop was Neiman Marcus, where Kylo quickly and absent-mindedly selected strappy silver heels and a small, beaded baguette bag not even big enough to hold her cell phone.  

“Do you need anything?” Rey remembered to ask as they rung up their two newest purchases.  She wanted to hold up her end of the relationship. Kylo hadn’t asked her for anything but money so far, but she thought she ought to show that she could be equally attentive.

Kylo shook his head.  

Their final destination was a salon tucked in one of the mall’s exits.  A tall blonde girl with her hair piled into two buns like Minnie Mouse’s ears called him by name as the entered.

“Kylo!  You’re still looking great.  I don’t have you down for today…?” 

“Not for me,” he told her. “Kaydel, can you get my girlfriend in?  This is Rey.”

Rey startled to hear it said as nonchalantly as that.

Kaydel appeared equally shocked.

“Wow.”  She paused.  “Nice to meet you.  What do you need?  Cut, color, salon services…?” 

Rey looked up at Kylo and bit her lower lip.  “I already blew my hair out this morning?”  she muttered, though from the way the day had gone, she could anticipate his response.  He did not even glance in her direction as he spoke to Kaydel. 

“No time for cut and color,” he said.  “But she wants a blowout, makeup, and waxing.”

“ _She_ does _not_ want waxing,” Rey said, irritated.  It wasn’t like the women of Jakku didn’t know how to get hair off their bodies without going to fancy salons.  They used disposable razors and plenty of baking soda paste, the way their noble Pilgrim ancestors had prescribed. 

Kaydel grinned.  “Worth a try, huh?  Okay, come on back. Kylo, you just sit there and look gorgeous, like you do,” Kaydel told them. 

Kaydel towed her to a wash station in the back of the store.  Other women Rey’s age were there, reading magazines and chatting with their stylists.  Draped in the black plastic apron, Rey was indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd, and their attitude was welcoming. 

“So, how did you meet Kylo?” Kaydel asked, turning on the faucet and tipping Rey’s head back into the sink with gentle hands. 

“Umm, coffee shop, a while ago,” Rey said vaguely.

Kaydel sighed dramatically. 

“I never meet guys like that in coffee shops.  Old dudes with wedding ring tan-lines and goobers who still live in their parents’ basements…sure, those I have to beat off with a stick.  What’s your secret?”  

“...must be my accent,” Rey deflected. 

“Wooo, I can understand that,” Kaydel said dreamily.  “My mother had a terrible weakness for English guys.” 

Kaydel efficiently bundled Rey over to the blow-dry station, where Rey was blown out, curled, then brushed out again.  Her unremarkable, shoulder-length brown hair was in tousled waves by the time Kaydel finished.  

“Now just don’t touch it for the rest of the evening,” Kaydel instructed her. 

Kylo was still absorbed in his phone, and he didn’t look up while Kaydel passed her off to a shaven-headed man with a neat orange mustache.  

‘Kay with a C and an apostrophe’ looked deeply into her eyes for ten unblinking seconds, then began to cover her face and neck with makeup.

“I want to look natural,” Rey told him. 

“No, you don’t,” he said dismissively.  “You’re going to a fancy party.  You want to look like you’re naturally beautiful when you’re not wearing makeup, but you’re still wearing makeup.  If I make you look just naturally beautiful, people would think you forgot to put on makeup.”

That was as good an answer as Rey was likely to get on the subject of makeup, so she suffered the addition of eyeliner, foundation, bronzer, and highlighter to her usual routine of mascara and lip gloss. 

Kaydel returned carrying Rey’s shopping bags and pointed her at the women’s restroom. 

“Kylo says to hurry up,” she reported.  “He got his tux from his car and he’s already changed.”

Rey pulled up the time on her phone and was shocked to see it was the late afternoon.  The program began at 5:30 at the Republican Hotel, all the way downtown.  They’d spent the entire day shopping and getting ready for this party, and Rey got the sense that it wasn’t done to wear the same dress out more than once in a year. Was this her life now? 

Kaydel followed Rey into the ladies’ room and helped her get the dress on without smudging her hair or makeup.  She was either tactfully silent on the subject of Rey’s lack of undergarments or it was more common than Rey thought to go without. 

Rey emerged from the restroom as wobbly on her feet as a newborn fawn.  She clung to Kaydel’s arm, cursing her absent mother for never teaching her to walk in heels.  Kylo would be carrying her around by the end of the night, judging by the way the straps already cut into her tender, virgin feet, which were unused to the touch of anything but flip flops and running shoes.  

When they returned to the front room of the salon, Kylo was dressed in his tuxedo, still looking down at his phone while wearing the universal expression of men who are waiting on women.  

“Okay,” Rey said to announce herself.  “Do I look good enough to go to the ball?”

He stood up, taking his time with his answer.  His eyes swept her figure, lingering on where the dress caught along her hips.  He stared as though he could see straight through the fabric to where her undergarments ought to have been.  His eyes were dark as he tilted his chin down at her.

“The way you look in that dress, I would burn the place to ground and salt the earth beneath if you asked me to,” he said calmly.

“Well,” Rey said, wobbling away from Kaydel and taking Kylo’s arm.  “It’s a children’s charity, so that probably won’t be necessary.  But let’s discuss again if someone snubs me at the refreshment table.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kink-shame me on Twitter @YTCShepard


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m gonna puke,” Rey whispered, staring out at the sea of people in formalwear. 

Kylo edged ever-so-slightly away from her, but did not remove his hand from where it anchored her bare back. 

“Please don’t,” he said in return, sotto voce.  “But if you do, be strategic about it.  Choose your target wisely.”

Rey scanned the room. “Floral arrangement to our left? Target acquired." 

Kylo chuckled.  “How about that bald guy with the Louboutin shoes who just passed us?  He checked out your ass.” 

Rey held still not to reflexively twist and look at where her dress dipped below Kylo’s hand.  “I can’t blame him.  It’s just out there in the breeze in this dress.” 

Kylo nodded gravely. “Yes, but his pregnant wife didn’t appreciate the gusto with which he did it.  Rey, these are just normal, terrible people in fancy clothes.  Don’t be afraid of them.”

Rey gnawed on her lower lip, considering the scene.  Parking at the hotel and checking in was painless.  They had their tickets, their names were on the list, and the volunteers working the reception area had graciously welcomed them and pointed her at the open bar.  But now all the preliminary steps were accomplished, and Rey was faced with a crowd of several hundred strangers balancing glasses of champagne and small plates of hors d'oeuvres as they spoke in small groups.

No able-bodied guests were yet seated at the large round tables that ringed the stage and dance floor. Rey had to endure at least 20 minutes of small-talk before her next reprieve.

“Just tell me,” Kylo continued.  “Who do you want to talk to?  What about?  Or we can leave now.  There’s basketball on tonight.”

Rey made a face. 

“Or we can go into the women’s restroom and I can make all your wildest dreams come true,” he said idly.

“You’re funny,” Rey muttered, still clenching her purse in her hands, scanning for anyone who looked even mildly interested in talking to a teenage would-be philanthropist. 

She finally identified a group of more modestly dressed women wearing nametags, who she suspected were either organizers or actual staff at Alderaan Children’s Advocacy. Rey wrapped one hand around Ben’s granite-like forearm and slowly walked towards them. 

They were just people. Rey did not (throw up, or panic, or act inappropriately) have a problem with people.  Single people.  People in groups of three or less.  People she didn’t need anything from. 

“I think you can take them all yourself, but if they turn on us, I’ve got the big one with the purple shoes,” Kylo whispered to her the first time she stopped. 

She dragged herself forward, and thank all benevolent gods, one of the women with a nametag broke from her conversation to speak with them.  

Jyn Andor introduced herself as the staff attorney coordinator for CASA, not an administrator, but conversation with her bore some marginal fruit.  While Jyn was initially focused on Kylo as the relevant attendee, Kylo smoothly deflected her attention to Rey and Rey’s interest in children’s charities. 

Jyn pulled out her phone and entered Rey’s information, promising to follow up with her and their fundraising staff the next day. 

Rey did not really want to give to an established charity; giving her money to someone else’s foundation was giving up control, and Rey was too fresh from her sojourn through the seven levels of Texas foster care to think that simply throwing more money into someone else’s plan would help much. 

But any amount of time she could spend with people who were doing at least some good was additional work towards her goal.

Eventually, Jyn saw someone else she wanted to talk to and excused herself.  Rey tensed, finding herself suddenly in the middle of a group of people who were having conversations that did not include her. She turned slowly, looking for an exit or a break. 

“Drinks?” Kylo asked. She nodded gratefully.

He acquired a glass of champagne for her and something clear and fizzy in a tumbler for him.  Rey looked around the room—there were still several minutes left before the seated dinner would begin.

“I just wish I could not be so much in my head while this happens,” she told Kylo, still watching men and women come and go around the room.  “If I had to tell someone else how to do this, I would just tell her to approach the nearest person and introduce herself. I just…can’t.” 

Kylo grunted in understanding, taking a sip of his drink.  His expression was neutral, almost bored.

Then Rey felt his hand dip- slowly, almost leisurely.  It passed below the edge of the dress and continued further down.  When it was nearly cupping her left cheek, his fingers pressed into the cleft…he squeezed.  Rey went rigid. 

She slapped his chest with her purse.

“You ass,” she gritted out. Her face was aflame with embarrassment. She didn’t dare spin to see who might have seen it happen behind them.

“There’s nobody behind us,” Kylo said, taking another unconcerned gulp of his drink.  “And you’re not thinking about the scary parvenus in knock-off Dolce any more, are you?” 

“I’m going to the restroom,” she muttered, not willing to concede the point, even if her rising panic had subsided.  Anger was always an easier emotion for her to ride than fear.

Kylo nodded in agreement. “Okay.  Want me to come too?”

She bared her teeth and stalked away from him. 

* * * 

There was a salad course, with a choice of balsamic or sugar-free strawberry dressing on baby spinach with slivers of mushrooms.  Then a passed basket of assorted breads.  For their entree, a choice of chicken paillard or grilled salmon. 

“Never choose fish when dining with a crowd,” Kylo whispered, and that sounded like good counsel.

While they ate, the speakers were introducing each other.  The director of community giving introduced the chair of the board, who thanked him for introducing her.  They then thanked each other.  The chair introduced a councilman, who thanked the chair, and also the director. They agreed that they had all done a good job and worked very hard on the evening’s ball.  Additional thanks were exchanged.  

Kylo was looking at his phone beneath the lip of the table while the other women at the table were looking at Kylo.

Rey tried not to bristle at the way the blonde woman seated across the table was openly eye-fucking Rey’s date.  The woman's hair was a uniform shade of pale straw, arranged in long and trailing ringlets. She wore a high-necked violet halter dress and dangling diamond earrings which nearly brushed her shoulders.  Her husband, a deeply tanned fellow with the softness of muscle gone to seed, was talking animatedly to a nearly identical woman on his other side. 

Kylo turned his head to check on Rey, followed her gaze, then leaned back in his chair, wrapping his arm along the back of Rey’s seat.  

The blonde across the way now pretended interest in the stage.  Rey didn’t want to snuggle into Kylo’s arm, even if he did smell delicious. He wasn’t really her boyfriend. She was just getting what she had paid for.  And she apparently hadn’t paid him enough to pretend to be happy to be with her. 

The procession of organizers finished introducing and thanking each other around the time that the cater-waiters came back around with a cart of blueberry cheesecake slices and coffee.  The keynote speaker was an assistant district attorney in the children and families division. Rey checked her program; Rose Tico was the person responsible for the protocol that declared that every child in Alderaan who was removed from their home was screened by a trauma specialist, regardless of the reason for removal.  

Rey waved off the waxy slice of cheesecake and focused on the small woman in a long rust-orange dupioni silk gown climbing the stairs to the podium.

Rose pulled the microphone down to the level of her face with a screech of metal.  She cleared her throat, appearing to gather her thoughts.

“Tonight in Alderaan, there is a child who is hungry.  There is a child who is hurting.  There is a child who is lost,” she said in a firm voice.

The baseline of chatter that had filled the room over the previous speakers subsided.  Chairs rattled and linens rustled as the attendees focused on Rose Tico. 

“I know,” she said, gripping the microphone.  “Because I used to be one.”

With practiced diction, Rose began to tell her story, which began on a smuggler’s boat out of Vietnam, led to the Port of Galveston, and finished with a police raid shutting down the illegal sweatshop cannery where her entire family had been indentured to the gang who brought them into the country. 

“I was six years old, and I didn’t know English, I didn’t know my numbers or letters, I didn’t know that it was illegal for me to work all day—but I knew it was wrong.  It’s still wrong today.  And it’s still happening today.  Right here in Alderaan.  Children just like me are trafficked into prostitution, illegal labor, and abuse.” 

The room was quiet while Rose clicked through a slide show—one she had apparently given in the past. She discussed the grim statistics regarding human trafficking, slave labor, child prostitution, and her own office’s general failure to prosecute violations. 

“I invite you to support the Alderaan Child Advocacy Center tonight,” she concluded.  “Your pledges pay for training for our police officers and prosecutors, staff at the advocacy center to prepare children to testify against their abusers, and programs to support parents and the community in caring for the affected children.”  

Members of the audience began nodding and reaching for their checkbooks. 

“That’s my baby sister,” the woman seated to Rey’s left whispered, her face spread in a tearful grin. 

“Really?” Rey asked, surprised.  Her seatmate had only exchanged a few pleasantries and the basic biographic details: Paige, 33, dentist.  

Paige nodded.  “She’s always wanted to save the world.  And she’s _doing it_.” Paige shook her head in disbelief. 

“And she’s only…27?” Rey asked.

“26,” Paige replied. “She got that award from the city after only her first year in the DA’s office.  Like I said, amazing.” 

“I wish…I wish I could talk to someone like her.  Someone who saw what needed to be done and did it. Who knew what to do,” Rey said, murmuring the last sentence mostly to herself.  Rose and Paige had come from no better circumstances than Rey—worse, probably. They didn’t inherit money out of nowhere.  But they’d done so much more than Rey. 

Paige pulled her phone out of her bag. 

“You want to talk to her? Rey, was it?  I’m sure Rose would be happy to talk to someone closer to her own age about her work.  She’s still the youngest attorney in her division, so it’s all old married people with kids that she works with.  Give me your e-mail address and I’ll set you up on a lunch date.”

“Oh, I-“ Rey stammered. “Are you sure she’d be okay with that? I’d love to.” 

“For sure,” Paige said, smiling.  “She should get out more.  Do you know any single guys?  She needs to date more—or at all---and it looks like you’re doing pretty well in that department for yourself.” She glanced over at Kylo, then winked at Rey.  

Rey smiled back at Paige. “I can ask if he’s got a brother or something.  Or if she wants, she can have my foster-brother.  He’s only 22, but he’s cute and painfully single at the moment.” 

Paige laughed. “Sure. Make it happen.” 

Rey wondered, idly, whether Kylo did have any brothers.  The world seemed too small for more than one man of his size and force of personality, but she thought it might make for a pleasant daydream someday. 

Now that Rose was off the stage, the organizers were dimming the lights and rolling a slickly produced video that combined soft-focus video of children entering classrooms and courtrooms with a minor key folk song and a voiceover detailing the budgetary requirements of Alderaan CASA.  Rey reached for the envelopes in the center of the table and pulled out her debit card. 

While copying her card number into the donation form, she noticed Kylo out of the corner of her eye. He was doing the same. 

He caught her staring at him, and he muttered, “I’m using my own money.” 

“No, I-“ Rey said. “Of course.  I didn’t think-”  She felt bad for the surprise that must have shown on her face.  Of course he could give to charity if he wanted to.  He made enough money.  Why wouldn’t he? 

“It’s a good cause,” he said, seeming to justify it more to himself than her.  She nodded, trying not to push the issue.  He looked around the room with apparent distaste.  “Anyone else you need to talk to?” 

Rey shook her head. There would be dancing after dinner, but Rey didn’t know how to dance, and she was fairly certain she couldn’t even stand for any substantial period of time in her shoes.

“You can take me home,” she said.

* * *

“Do you like my house?” Rey asked when Kylo opened her car door and extended his hand to help her out.  She’d consumed three or so glasses of champagne, and she didn’t feel buzzed, just honest.

He lifted her up out of his car and adroitly turned her as she stumbled in her heels.  He pulled her back against his chest so that they could both look at Rey’s home from their vantage point at the zenith of the semi-circle drive of stamped concrete.   Kylo pinned her hips to his own, holding her by her shoulders.  He rested his chin on top of her head, the point digging into her crown.

“No, I hate it,” he said. 

A startled laugh bubbled past her lips.

“Don’t spare my feelings, tell me what you really think,” she said, finding him suddenly hilarious.

Kylo sighed and cupped the back of her right hand with his own.  He raised their joined hands to point at the large stucco façade of her house.

“It’s all wrong. Look.  How many windows do you have?” 

Rey squinted, tried to count.  Her house had floodlights in the half-grown oak trees flanking the drive, so the house was illuminated fairly well.

“Lots.  Like…twelve,” she said. 

“Yes,” Kylo agreed. “How many different shapes do you have?”

“Umm, lots,” she said.  

“Exactly.  It’s like someone went nuts and bought the sampler at the window store.  It makes the whole thing look unbalanced, which it is.  Your roofline would be pulled over for driving drunk if it left your house.  You’ve got two random brick pillars which are hanging out next to your foam quoins. And the entryway is right next to the unnecessary three-car-garage, but sunk all the way back so that there’s just a big dank hole in the front of the building.” 

Rey was fully belly laughing now, even though Kylo sounded nearly furious as he finished his rant. 

“Oh my god,” she said. “You are so offended on my house’s behalf.  What should I dooooo-“

“Put a cigarette out in your carpet and spend the insurance money on a different house,” he said.

Rey squirmed around in his arms, nearly shaking with her mirth, even though his body was stiff. She wove her hands through his arms and reached them up to cup the sides of his head, right over his ears.  She yanked on the curls there until he tilted his head down at her. 

“Where were you when I needed a real estate consultant?” she asked him.

“You didn’t need a _consultant_ , anyone can see-“ he began, but Rey went up on tiptoes to kiss him.  Her aim wasn’t particularly good, and she caught more chin than anything else, but he got the idea. He opened his mouth and sucked in her tongue when she ran it along his delectable lower lip.  Kylo’s chest curved around her, and when he pressed forward more forcefully, she stumbled. He caught her before her knees could hit the ground, then slipped his hands down under her ass to lift her up.  

“Is this the point in the evening where I have to start carrying you?” he asked in a low voice. He pressed another kiss to the side of her temple. 

“Uh huh,” Rey said. “I’m done with walking for the evening.”

“Hmm,” he agreed.  “Good thing I provide door to door service.”  He leaned her backwards until he could wedge one arm beneath her knees, then hefted her up against his chest.  Her feet dangled limply. 

As he began to carry her up her pebbled walkway, she asked, “where did you learn so much about houses, anyway?”

Kylo paused when they reached her front door.  Rey fished in her little purse for her key and put it into his hand where it curved over her knees.  He dipped to turn it in her lock without dropping her.

“I started college in an architecture program,” he finally admitted.  He kicked the door shut behind him as they crossed into her house. 

“You wanted to be an architect?” Rey asked, impressed.  “Build houses?”

“Design them,” Kylo said, flipping the lock on the door behind him with his knee. “Skyscrapers. I went through a real Howard Roark phase when I was a teenager.”

Rey searched her knowledge banks for a second and came up blank.

“I don’t know who that is,” she confessed as Kylo turned to the bottom of her front staircase.  She really hoped he didn’t drop her.  The whole area was sheathed in Travertine, and she’d crack her skull for sure. 

“Thank god for that,” he said.  “All the world needs is an Objectivist billionaire teenager with political interests.”  

“Thank you,” said Rey, although she was not at all certain whether he’d delivered a compliment.  

“So why didn’t you become an architect?”  Rey asked as he steadily climbed.  His cardiovascular health was truly excellent; he wasn’t even breathing hard. 

“My family cut me off and kicked me out.”

Rey flinched, ashamed she’d asked—she should have realized that there wasn’t a happy back-story behind ‘some college, no STDs, looking for sugar baby relationship.’ 

“Assholes!” Rey said.  He dropped her on her feet at her bedroom door.   

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Lots of people are.”   He looked at her feet.  “Think you can make it from here.”

“Oh- I mean, yes,” Rey said, trying not to feel disappointed.

“Good,” Kylo said, and walked into her bedroom, leaving her standing in the doorway.  

* * * 

Rey was barefoot in her bedroom, well aware that the thin layer of silk jersey was the only thing between her and the world.  Between her and Kylo Ren. 

He was in her closet, she thought.  Doing she knew not what. 

“I can’t find your dry-cleaning bin,” she finally heard him call from past the bathroom.

She didn’t have a dry-cleaning bin.  As a rule she did not buy clothes that required dry-cleaning.  So expensive. 

Kylo emerged from her closet, jacket off, bow-tie untied, and the top button of his pants undone to expose his braces.  He’d also removed his shoes and socks, and Rey stared at his long, pale feet in fascination. 

“My eyes are up here,” he said, voice warm with amusement. 

She jerked them up guiltily. 

“Go give me your dress and I’ll start you a dry-cleaning pile,” he instructed her.

“You’re so bossy,” she retorted. 

At those words, a flicker of surprise flashed across his face.  He waited a second longer than natural to respond.

“I suppose I am,” he said, with some kind of unknown hesitation.  “Should I not be?”

Rey waved a hand at him as she passed him on the way to the bathroom.  “Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim,” she said.

In her closet, she took off the dress and folded it.  Changed into her usual sleeping clothes, which were a matching set of boxers and a t-shirt with Wonder Woman insignia.  Did not put on underwear, and felt very brave.  

But then she felt more naked than she wanted to, so she grabbed her short, fluffy, yellow robe.  It had been a Christmas gift from Finn.  

On the way back through her bathroom, she stopped to scrub the layers of makeup off her face with a fresh washcloth.  She examined her damp pink face in the mirror, and thought that she looked very young, and very scared.  She grimaced, baring her teeth in a lion snarl.  She’d made it this far, hadn’t she? 

Back in her bedroom, Kylo was stripping pillows and blankets off her bed.  Most of them were in a pile in the corner; as she watched, he leaned across the expanse of her bed to grab the edge of the quilted silk coverlet where it was tucked below the opposite side of her mattress.  He’d removed his shirt. 

Rey’s eyes were drawn first to his lower back dimples, of course.  That Kylo had lower back dimples felt like a crucial piece of information to know about him, more meaningful than any amount of biographical data. 

Below them, however, she could see the black-and-gold elastic of a band of boxer-briefs over the low-slung edge of his tuxedo pants.  Rey’s eyes narrowed. 

When she goosed him, Kylo made a noise Rey had not heard from his throat nor that of any grown man. 

“What are you _doing_?” he yelped when he spun to look at her.  His voice was probably higher in pitch than he liked. 

“What am I doing?  You lied to me!  You said you weren’t wearing underwear.  What are _you_ doing?”

“Creating a burn pile,” Kylo said, pointing at the pile of bedding on the floor.  “What did you do, buy a bed in a bag from Saks?” 

That wasn’t too far from the truth, and Rey was almost grateful that he had given her an excuse to get rid of the burgundy monstrosity. 

Kylo crossed his arms, and Rey regretted that this drew her attention like a magnet to his dinner-plate-sized pectoral muscles. 

“I meant the underwear,” Rey said, trying not to lose her train of thought.  “You tricked me.”

Kylo shrugged.  “Can’t blame me for how I separate you from your regrettable clothing choices.”

She could, she really could.

Now that her bed was stripped to nothing but her unobjectionable grey bamboo microfiber sheets, Kylo was satisfied.  He sauntered across the room and flicked the light switch, leaving only the dimmed glow from her Dyson air purifier to light the room.  He toed off his tuxedo pants, leaving him in the Versace boxer briefs she’d glimpsed above then.  The medusa head over his crotch was compelling, and Rey might as well have been a pillar of stone as he climbed into her bed.

“Um,” Rey said.

“Are you getting in?” he asked, and Rey couldn’t tell if the casualness was feigned. 

“Um,” Rey said again.

He let out a small puff of air, his littlest laugh.

“Don’t be so worried I’m going to molest you in your sleep, princess. You’ve made it clear you don’t want the Kylo Ren deluxe bundle.  Plus you look like a sweet little baby duck in that robe.  I doubt I could even get it up.” 

“Oh,” Rey said intelligently, trying to decide whether she was annoyed or insulted or a small bit disappointed that he didn’t have any dark designs on her person that night.  And confused that she had not understood how hiring a sugar baby for the charity gala necessarily entailed him climbing into her bed wearing nothing but designer underwear and so much pale skin.

After a moment, she wrapped her yellow robe more securely around her body and climbed into bed. 

It was a California king, so their bodies didn’t come into contact as she settled her head on the pillow and the sheets under her chin.  She looked up at the ceiling fan, head swimming and thoughts racing.  

She ought to dust the blades of the fan.  She hadn’t really deep-cleaned since moving in.

“I’m not retracting my previous statements, but…” Kylo said, rolling over towards her and propping himself on one elbow.

Slowly, delicately, he leaned towards her, propped on one elbow.  His full lips against hers felt as decadent as the silk dress when he kissed her. His kiss was unhurried and thorough. Boys in Jakku had often kissed her on the way to something.  To leaving her at her door.  To slipping a hand under her t-shirt.  To asking if she would fix their car.

Kylo, tonight, was kissing her just to kiss her.  Tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opened them.  Breath playing over her cheek.  The edge of his sharp lower teeth against her lower lip.  Rey reached up and ran her fingers through his curls, experimentally scratching his scalp with her fingertips.  He shuddered under her touch, and Rey had the growing suspicion that her yellow robe might not be as much of a deterrent as he had indicated.

He rolled back to his side of the bed, and she could hear him breathing.

“Good night, princess,” he said, and pulled one of her pillows over his head. 

After a moment, Rey did the same. 

A few minutes after that, she could hear him snoring. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: minor unwanted groping
> 
> Kink-shame me @YTCShepard on Twitter!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated tags and warnings in the end-notes.

Rey did not normally list cowardice among her miser’s hoard of failings.  But it would be difficult to describe her decision to hide in the half-bath beneath the stairs—the one with the artisanal glass basin sink that spotted whenever it was used—as anything but yellow-bellied avoidance of difficult issues.  Or one issue in particular. 

“Pick up, pick up,” she muttered at her screen as Finn’s number flashed.  Finn loved sleep like a drunk loved Taaka but he usually left his ringer on. 

His voice, when he finally answered, was chipper and alert.  She could hear Mariah Carey blaring in the background.  Ah.  It was cleaning day in his on-campus apartment.  Finn’s upbringing prior to foster care had given him a fanatical devotion to tidiness and hygiene, and the man was never as happy as when he had just applied Windex to a clear flat surface. 

He chirped her a good morning and asked a few desultory questions about the event before very subtly moving on what they both wanted to talk about.

“So, how was Kylo?” he finally asked.  

“So, I mean…good,” Rey said, collecting her thoughts.  “Very good. He was good.”

“Uh huh,” Finn said after a long pause.  She could imagine him making impatient gestures at her with his Windex.  

“He was a perfect gentleman,” she clarified.  “Very respectful.”   Mostly. Sort of.  In the ways that mattered.

“That’s descriptive,” Finn said, unimpressed.  “Am I going to have to liquor it out of you?”  

“No, no.  I’m just still collecting my thoughts,” Rey said. She’d thought that hearing Finn’s voice would help to ground her, but her mind was still as vast and fluttering as a flock of grackles. 

“One question then,” Finn said.  “Was it worth it?  Do you think you’ll see him again?”

That was easy to answer. “Definitely,” Rey said, staring at herself in the mirror.  The sconce lighting did nothing for her, and her eyes looked dark and sunken with the shadows they cast on her face.  Kylo slept like a log—a log that was being milled for construction framing---but Rey spent most of the night staring at the man in her bed like a creeper.

Rey didn’t follow up her definitive statement and the silence stretched a beat too long.

“Oh my GOD peanut,” Finn breathed.  “He’s still there, isn’t he.” 

Yep, Rey thought.  She would definitely be seeing Kylo again. As soon as he finished investigating the water chemistry of her swimming pool.

* * *  

Rey locked the door to her bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet while Finn interrogated her.  

“Do I need to come over and make him leave?” Finn asked, and Rey could just imagine him puffing up his chest.

Rey thought about it. While it did seem as though Kylo had knocked over a number of important social boundaries by inviting himself in and making himself comfortable, it wasn’t like he’d done anything objectionable either the previous night or this morning. 

He made her a breakfast smoothie.  He reprogrammed her thermostat so that it no longer blasted 65-degree air at 7 a.m. He was investigating her pool’s water chemistry. And he was doing it all in just his designer skivvies, looking like a goddamn advertisement for Italian cologne.  When she thought about it that way, she’d be nuts to kick the man out.

Yes, Finn, please come evict the beautiful man before he improves my quality of life even more. 

“No,” she said. “I think we’re going to brunch later.” 

Rey reassured Finn regarding her impending state of cohabitation and eventually emerged from the bathroom. She heard Kylo rattling around in the kitchen, opening cabinets and drawers and swearing softly.  He’d requested a notepad and pen, and Rey had the impression he was making lists of consumer goods that she needed to acquire.

Well, brunch followed by more shopping was as good a plan as any for her day, and certainly at least as productive as her usual routine of directionless Internet activity followed or preceded by video games.  

After a quick shower, Rey met Kylo in her empty living room.  He’d found a tape measure somewhere in her garage and was bent over her fireplace, measuring it.  Rey took another moment to appreciate the lower back dimples before clearing her throat.

“I’ve possibly got a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt that will fit you, but the aesthetic is going to be very much ‘Michael Jordan at the 1984 Olympics,’ fit-wise.” 

Kylo straightened and turned to face her.  Rey solemnly told herself that she was not allowed to look at his crotch.  As a compromise, she allowed herself to stare at his chest.

Which was…wow.  So nice.  Rey wondered where he worked out.  She wondered whether his shopping list included gym equipment.  She had so many spare bedrooms.  Maybe one could be a gym?  Maybe he needed someone to spot him while he lifted heavy things?  Maybe Rey could be that person?

“I’ll just put my pants and shirt back on and we can stop at the mall for some new clothes,” Kylo told her, crossing his arms.  

Rey blinked.  “What?  That’s insane.  I don’t want to go back to the mall. Let’s just stop by your place and pick up some of your clothes.”

Kylo rubbed the back of his neck. 

“I’d rather have new clothes,” he said smoothly.  “I don’t need anything from my apartment.  You need a lot of new things.  We can shop for me at the same time.” 

Rey squinted at him, trying to figure out his angle.  “That’s just wasteful.  Surely you’ve got stuff at your apartment that you want.” 

“Not really,” he said, setting his chin at a stubborn angle. 

“Your toiletries?  Computer?  Shoes?” Kylo shook his head at each question.

“You really want to do the walk of shame into Wal-Mart with me just so you can get new razors and deodorant?” Rey said with growing disbelief.

“We’re not going to Wal-Mart, but I’m not sure why I’d be ashamed walking in next to you.  I’ll collect high-fives from all the cashiers.”  

Rey smiled despite herself, then remembered her objective. 

“Don’t you at least have a passport or papers you need to get?” Rey asked.  “What if we want to go somewhere?” 

This was the angle that finally succeeded.  Kylo’s face turned considering.  

“You want to go on a trip?” he asked.

Rey tried to look nonchalant.  “Well, I thought that was part of the ‘Kylo Ren deluxe bundle.’  The active lifestyle.  I’ve never left the state.  Maybe we could go on vacation?” 

Kylo settled his jaw as he thought about that. 

“Fine,” he said.  “We have brunch reservations at 11.  We’ll stop at my apartment _very quickly_ to pick up my passport.  And then I get to pick where we go.  Agreed?” 

Rey grinned at him in happy victory. Her heart felt full.   “Agreed.” 

 * * *

Kylo’s apartment complex was a dump.  A dive. A slum.  Situated alongside Interstate-35 on the north side of town, the roar of the freeway nearly drowned out Rey’s thoughts. Rey had lived in worse places.  But not by much.

The apartments were arranged along narrow alleys of mossy concrete, with rotting wooden balconies lurching across the open space and blocking air and light.  A few sported flags or potted plants or children’s bicycles—small signs of permanent habitation—but most were bare.  This wasn’t a place where people stayed long.  

A few deflated pastel balloons puddled on the ground next to a ‘Now Leasing’ sign. 

Kylo drove them through the maze of identical wood-and-stucco hovels and parked under a rusty carport. 

“You can stay in the car,” he informed her.  “I’ll be quick.”  His jaw was tight and face unhappy. 

“I can help you carry stuff-“ Rey began to offer, but Kylo slammed the car door shut on her words. 

Rey huffed in disappointment.  She wasn’t sure why he would be embarrassed to show her how he lived.  He knew she hadn’t grown up with money.  She was, she thought, a very non-judgmental person in general.  Very understanding when it came to cash-strapped environments. 

Rey let out a low whistle of annoyance and fiddled with Kylo’s stereo, changing it to the Top 40 station out of spite.  Thus she did not see which car the redheaded man emerged from; she only caught sight of him as he passed in front of Kylo’s Honda.  

He caught her eye because he didn’t belong in this place any more than Kylo did.  Rey appraised his cognac-colored alligator boots as costing at least a thousand dollars.  His black jeans and high-collared jacket were similarly expensive.  So when the wind caught his open jacket, Rey was watching during the moment that the handgun holstered on his hip was exposed.

This was Texas, and a substantial portion of the population was carrying.  But Rey didn’t like the look on the redheaded man’s face—and she didn’t like the way he was headed up Kylo’s stairwell after him. 

As soon as the man’s feet disappeared up the concrete and rebar steps, Rey slipped noiselessly out Kylo’s car.  On cat-soft feet she ran after him, heart dropping for reasons she couldn’t explain. 

She wasn’t positive which floor Kylo lived on, and lost some time peering down the dark interior hallways on the second and third floors.  Rey was a little out of breath when she reached the landing that lead to the fourth floor.  Her head was barely above the ground level when she spied Kylo and the redhead at the end of the hallway.  

They were too far away for her to make out individual words, but their faces were angry, and the redhead’s body language was stiff with fury.  He jabbed a finger at Kylo’s chest to punctuate his words.

Neither man registered Rey’s slow ascent.  Between Rey and the two men there was one door propped open by discarded banker’s box full of files, folders, and one half-dead potted orchid. 

Rey slipped in the open door and continued watching Kylo’s argument.  She couldn’t explain her feeling of dread, but she was unwilling to discard it. 

“I’ve kept the deal I made with-“ were the first of Kylo’s words that Rey could make out.

“Fuck whatever ‘deal’ you cut with the old man,” the redhead snarled.  “You don’t have any ‘deal’ with me.  You think you can fuck all my shit up and walk away clean?” He jabbed Kylo in the chest with his finger, and the faint fluorescent light in the hallway caught on the ostentatious ring on the middle finger of his right hand.  “You think you can just quit?  Give two weeks fucking notice? To _me_?”

Kylo’s next words were lower, his tone soothing.  His face was pinched and angry, but he held both his palms up.  

The man responded to whatever Kylo said by slapping him across the face with an open hand.    

Rey gasped, but the sound was covered by the redhead’s roar of rage as Kylo lifted his hands up to protect his face, holding them like a boxer. 

Rey didn’t understand why Kylo wasn’t fighting back; he had a couple of inches and at least thirty pounds on the redhead, and the other man hadn’t drawn his gun.  The redhead was screaming obscenities at Kylo as he struck out at him, his hands and words rapidly losing coherence. 

“Stop it!” Rey eventually cried, unable to watch Kylo’s passive resistance. 

“Who the fuck-“ the man said, spinning and searching for the source of the sound. 

His eyes narrowed when they found Rey.  His pale cheeks were bright red with anger, and his upper lip was pulled back in a feral snarl. 

“Are you Kylo’s new piece of gash?” he spat at her.  “You need to mind your place-“  He advanced as he chewed out his words at her, and Rey retreated into Kylo’s apartment. The redhead’s hand floated over to the hip where Rey had seen his holstered weapon.  

Kylo’s apartment was utterly empty, devoid of furniture. Rey looked around frantically in search of some object she could use as a weapon.  The other man’s words cut off as Kylo rushed him from behind, thudding into him violently and wrapping his own arms around the redhead in a bear hug. 

The redhead screeched like a wild animal, thrashing from side to side in an attempt to free himself from Kylo’s grasp.  Eventually he ducked his chin to his chest and bucked it backwards and directly into Kylo’s face.  Rey heard the crunch of Kylo’s nose striking the back of the redhead’s skull, and Kylo then let go of the redhead to reflexively palm his face.  Rey could see blood begin to seep out around his fingers.  

The redhead turned with a wild backwards swing of his right hand, striking Kylo again across the face. His ring cruelly sliced along Kylo’s forehead and cheek, and Kylo staggered backwards, bringing both hands up to cover his ruined face. 

Rey’s eyes finally lit upon the mop and bucket in the corner of Kylo’s tiny galley kitchen.  The redhead seemed to have momentarily forgotten her in his advantage over Kylo.  She wasn’t in time to keep him from kneeing Kylo in the groin and knocking him to the ground, but before he could follow up with a kick to Kylo’s unprotected midsection, Rey seized the handle of the mop, rushed across the room, and brought the mop handle down on the back of the redhead’s skull with all her might. It connected with an impact that sent vibrations all the way up her arm. 

He fell to his knees, but Rey knew he would be a danger until he was disarmed or disabled.  Swinging the mop handle like a softball bat, she brought it back around across his forehead.  This time, the noise of impact was more of a crack than a thud, and the man fell to his back on the dingy greige carpet, his eyes closed.  Just for good measure, Rey kicked him in the stomach, although her sneakers would not do nearly as much damage as the redhead’s silver-reinforced boots would have done to Kylo.  He didn’t make a sound when she struck him a third time, and as the adrenaline and fear slowly receded, Rey felt a new terror that she’d killed the man.

Her voice was curiously flat when it emerged from her throat.

“Is he…”  she asked Kylo. 

Kylo had barely pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall.  Blood was flowing freely down his face between his fingers.  He didn’t respond to Rey’s words, so without letting go of her mop, Rey reached out her trembling left hand and touched the redhead’s chest.  It rose and fell slightly under her fingers.  He was still alive.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Rey told Kylo, but he didn’t move.  Rey let the mop fall to the floor, and Kylo finally startled at the sound, opening one eye to stare up her. 

Rey grabbed the box of his belongings from next to the door. 

“Come on,” she told him again.  He didn’t move.  She could see his chest shaking.  “Come on!” she yelled, and he finally lurched to his feet, his one open eye staring at nothing.  She grabbed him by the elbow, and tugged him out of the apartment with her, leaving the redhead unconscious on the floor behind them. 

* * *  

They were several blocks away before Rey felt secure enough to pull Kylo’s car into an alleyway full of overflowing dumpsters and assess his face. 

She pulled off her t-shirt and pressed it to his forehead.  She had a sports bra underneath, and Kylo’s tuxedo shirt was already covered in blood in various stages of drying.  When she pulled the cloth away, the cut continued to bleed sluggishly, but she couldn’t see the white of bone underneath.  Rey was no doctor, but she didn’t think it was so wide that it wouldn’t shut. 

“I should take you to the hospital,” she said, speaking slowly and uncertainly.

Kylo gave a ragged noise of disapproval. 

“You can’t.  They’ll call the cops,” he said. 

Rey bit her lower lip. Calling the cops was not an approved method of dealing with your problems in Jakku County, as the cops were as liable to remove your children, other family members, drugs, or other possessions as the source of a problem, but as best Rey could tell, they had been attacked without any provocation whatsoever.  Wasn’t it the job of the police to occasionally arrest violent people who committed crimes? 

Sensing her hesitation, Kylo gave a bitter laugh.  “You beat Hux unconscious back there, and yet you think the police are going to arrest _him_ , and not us?” 

Rey didn’t think it was a crime to win a fight, but Kylo seemed certain of the idea’s fault. 

“Who is he?” Rey asked, although she’d already decided to take Kylo back to her house, and not the hospital. 

Kylo was silent so long that she began to think he wasn’t going to answer. 

“My ex, I guess,” he said reluctantly. 

Rey sucked in a shallow breath before she could suppress her reaction. She didn’t know why she was so surprised; Kylo’s profile had been open about his preferences or lack thereof.  But- “you were with that greasy little treeweasel?” she demanded, unable to stop herself.  

Kylo was silent again. His non-answer was as good as a response, though.

Rey shook her head.  “Was this the first time he hit you?”  she asked, trying to modulate her tone of voice so that she didn’t sound quite so disapproving.  Kylo didn’t need any judgment today.

“No,” Kylo finally said. “but this wasn’t about…today wasn’t about that.  This wasn’t a”--he swallowed hard—"domestic dispute.  Hux and I have been over for a long time.” 

Rey drove very carefully, stopping on yellows and observing posted speed limits.  They didn’t need to get pulled over while Kylo was covered in his own blood.  It took a long time to get back to her house that way.

“What was he angry with you about?” Rey couldn’t stop herself from asking.  But Kylo didn’t answer her at all.  He slumped against the window, holding Rey’s wadded t-shirt against his face.

* * * 

“He’s been in there for a long time,” Rey reported to Finn. 

First aid and trauma care were well within Rey’s foster-home veteran skillset, and after cleaning and bandaging Kylo’s face, she’d drawn him a warm bath, propped her iPad up on the bathroom counter to play the Great British Baking Show, and sent him into her master bathroom to calm down.

He hadn’t spoken a word to her during the entire process. 

“Should I go in there to check on him?” she prodded Finn. 

Finn, of a similar background to Rey, was in agreement on the lack of governmental involvement.  He diverged wildly in opinion on the point where Rey had taken Kylo home rather than pushing him out of the car in front of the nearest YMCA.  

“He’s a grown-ass man,” he groused at her.  It had taken all her convincing to keep him from charging over and evicting Kylo from Rey’s house, bath, and life.  “It’s not like he’s going to hit his head and drown.”

Rey had heard the hot water come on a few times, but Kylo hadn’t stirred for over an hour.

She could just see him around the corner of the open door to her bedroom.  He had not even washed the blood out of his hairline.  And he wasn’t watching the baking show.  He was just staring at the wall. 

“I’m going in,” she told Finn, cutting off his protests and turning off her phone.  

Rey gathered a few necessary supplies from downstairs and then walked briskly into her bathroom, expecting some objection from Kylo.  His eyes tracked her, but he said nothing as she passed through the bathroom into her closet.  In her closet, Rey ransacked her drawers until she found her royal blue Speedo.  Kylo was naked in the bath, that was unavoidable, but she could do her best not to make this weird by being naked too.

Once she was changed and her hair was tied up out of her way, she grabbed her Ziploc baggie full of ice cubes, her washcloths, and the plastic pitcher she used for iced tea and Crystal Light.  Kylo did not greet her upon her return to her bathroom. 

Rey loved her bathroom. The large space was tiled and painted in soft, neutral beige.  Her garden tub was large enough for her to stretch out her entire body.  She spent a lot of time relaxing in the hot water. 

Kylo didn’t look relaxed. He had his knees pulled up close to his chest, and Rey was thus spared the question of whether she should look at his penis or not. 

“Excuse me,” Rey said, gingerly stepping in to the tub.  The water had gone tepid, and Rey had to lean over Kylo to pour more hot water in.  Oops- it was too late.  She looked at his penis.  The water wasn’t too cold at all, she thought. 

After recovering her mission, Rey handed Kylo the peas to put over his face, then picked up her pitcher and washcloths.  Moving slowly and with more confidence than she felt, Rey began to wash his face and neck. She needed to use several washcloths, but she avoided turning the rest of the water bloody.  His hair was soft and slippery in her fingers, and once she got it clean, she retrieved her hairbrush from the vanity drawer and combed it off his face.  

Kylo was still and quiet under her ministrations, making no move to either help or hinder her as she cleaned him up. 

The peas had gone soft and mushy by that point, so she took them back from him and tossed them out in the small grocery-bag-lined bin below her vanity.  

Clean and bandaged, his face didn’t look so bad.  The cut went through an eyebrow and bisected his cheek and neck, but it was more of a deep scratch than a slash.  His nose was in roughly the same shape as the day they met, and while she was positive he’d have two black eyes in the morning, there wasn’t too much swelling right then.

“Feel a little better?” Rey asked after she gently patted his face dry with the last washcloth.

Kylo slowly nodded.  “Yes,” he croaked.  He seemed to realize their position, sharing the same bathtub.  He pulled his knees tighter to his chest and cleared his throat. 

“Yes,” he said again. “Thank you.”  He looked around the room as if waking up and taking in his surroundings.  “What the hell is that smell, though,” he asked once she had bloody cloth tossed into the laundry hamper. 

“Cucumber melon,” she told him, pointing him to the bottle of bath gel where she stored it with her matching shampoo and conditioner on the window sill.  “It’s from Bath and Body Works.” 

He snorted in derision, but that must have hurt his nose, because he clapped a hand to his face again.  

Rey was alarmed to realize he had tears in his eyes. 

“Hey,” she said, leaning forward and wrapping a hand around his ankle, under the water.  His black leg hairs tickled her palm.  An ankle was neutral territory, right?  “Hey, you’re okay.  You’re safe here.  Nothing bad is going to happen to you here.”

Kylo sighed, looking up at the ceiling.  

“Just give me a little longer to get my shit together,” he muttered as though he hadn’t heard her.  “I can be out of here in a few more minutes.” 

“Out of the bath, or…” Rey asked, confused.

“Out of your hair,” he said bitterly.  “You hardly signed up for this bullshit.” 

Rey frowned at him.  “I do think you should get out of the bath because your toes are all prune-y.  But you don’t have to go.  What kind of a horrible bitch would I be if I kicked you out now?” 

Kylo finally looked at her, bloodshot eyes watering as he met her gaze.  “I don’t think you’re a horrible bitch.  You’re incredible.  An incredible person.  But I think we both know I’ve fucked this up.  I should have never taken you back there.” 

Rey tried to soothe him by rubbing her fingers across the top of his foot, but he pulled it out of her grasp and into a modified cross-legged position.  Oh, time to not look at his penis again, Rey thought. 

“You said we’d take care of each other,” she said stubbornly.  “I agreed.  I’m not backing out of that deal.  Are you?” 

Kylo slowly shook his head. His expression had shifted to a kind of guarded hope.  Rey felt her heart clench in her chest at the way he looked at her. 

“I can take care of you,” Rey said with growing confidence.  “You don’t have to go back to that apartment.  Nobody else knows you’re with me, right?”

“No,” Kylo said.  “I’m surprised that Hux could even find me there. He must have pulled my credit report.”

“What a creep,” Rey said decisively.  

“Among other things,” Kylo muttered.  They were both silent for a moment.  Rey would have given a great deal to share Kylo’s thoughts.  

At last she rose from the bath, water beading on her swimsuit.

Rey extended a hand down to Kylo. 

“This is it,” she told him. “All that bad stuff is in the past now. It’s over.  From this moment on, it’s your future.  Nothing that happened matters anymore.  We can do whatever we want.  We’re free.”

Kylo looked up at her for a long time.  His eyes were shining.  

Kylo grasped her hand and held onto it like a drowning man. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: non-Reylo domestic violence and misogynistic language. 
> 
> Some of you will be happy I dropped the angst hammer. Some of you will want to nope out of this fic because there are some tough themes that will be discussed. Either is 100% fine with me!
> 
> Kink-shame me on Twitter @YTCShepard.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time on SHH:
> 
> Rey and Kylo visited the slum where Kylo lives. Kylo and his ex-boyfriend Hux got into a fistfight, which Rey broke up by beating Hux unconscious with a mop handle. Rey took Kylo back to her house and promised to take care of him.

It was an unfamiliar feeling.  It was a kind of ferocious tenderness that filled her when she thought about Kylo. And how he needed her.  It felt so powerful, energizing.  The previous night’s restless sleep was forgotten.  Rey was finally awake. 

She gave Kylo two Benadryl and sent him back to her bed.  His steps were halting, but Rey thought that he seemed more at ease.  He didn’t do more than wrap a towel around his hips before crawling under the covers, but Rey’s head was too full of plans to care about a little thing like that.  (It was not little, but Rey put it firmly out of her mind.  She had work to do.) 

It would have been beyond her before.  So many choices in such a short period of time.  So much newness.  Before, she might have worried over it for a week or more of nights, imagining everything that might go wrong.  Not anymore. Not for this, at least.  Not for Kylo.

It took her a few hours to do her research and make her choices.  Then she had to run out to Target to get them both some new clothes. She was normally a Wal-Mart shopper, but she remembered Kylo’s scorn for the place and went bougie instead.  She put her headphones in and tossed her head as she confidently filled her red cart with clothing, shoes, toiletries.  She had to guess at his size and his preferences.  Mostly, she grabbed the most expensive stuff on the shelf.  It was a heady sensation, spending her money.  She’d spent more today than she had since buying her house.  And since this was all for Kylo, she did not feel the usual stab of guilt at spending money she had not earned.  

It was almost the middle of the night by the time she returned.  She took several trips to haul her purchases up the stairs, moving quietly to avoid waking Kylo until she was done.  He needed the sleep. 

After she had everything organized, though, she had to wake him up.  In her bedroom, there was one light still on, although Kylo was quiet and still where he lay.  She tried calling his name softly. 

It didn’t work.  

So, she tried calling his name in a louder voice. 

No response.  

She had no choice but to cautiously approach him.  He had a pillow over his head, though he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.  Rey leaned in to touch his shoulder.  As soon as her hand touched his skin, though, he tossed the pillow off, wrapped both arms around her, and pulled her over him into the bed in a single quick movement.  

Rey squeaked and giggled when he tossed one heavy leg over her and pinned her down, face in her neck. 

“You didn’t come to bed,” he mumbled against the curve of her shoulder.  “I thought maybe you left.” 

She patted his shoulder with her free hand.  

“I haven’t been to bed. I had to go shopping and…”  He cut her off by tilting his head up and sucking the tip of her chin into his mouth.  

Kylo’s face was beginning to bloom in a dark bouquet of bruises, but it was his morning breath that had her wrinkling her nose.  Seeing her expression, he grinned wider and licked a line along her jaw before finding a spot just below her ear that seemed to fascinate him. 

Rey squirmed under the roll of ticklish pleasure his mouth sent through her body. 

She still had a few minutes, surely.  Just a few minutes to…Nope.  Focus.  

Kylo’s mouth moved lower, his day’s growth of stubble rubbing her neck pink as he went. 

“We actually do have to get up,” she protested weakly.   

“Mmm, no,” Kylo whispered as he found her collarbone.  “We don’t _have_ to do anything.”  He brushed his lips along the bone butterfly-soft. 

“We’ll miss our flight!” Rey eventually blurted as her hand ineffectually grasped at the sheets.  He was working on a particular angle, and Rey began to wonder if her tickets were transferable.  

Kylo paused.  “What flight?” he asked after a moment.

Rey rolled him off of her and sat up, pulling her knees under her. She grinned down at him.  It felt like Christmas.  Or like Christmas was supposed to feel.  Like watching Christmas cartoons in November and dreaming of Christmas. 

“We’re going on vacation,” she told him.  He blinked in surprise, though a smile was beginning to germinate in his swollen lips. 

“South American ski season doesn’t start for another month,” he cautioned her.  “If you want to learn, we can start on the indoor slope in Dubai…” 

Rey laughed.  “I didn’t even know there _was_ a South American ski season,” she said.  “Maybe our next trip?  We’re going to the beach.”

Kylo finally sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, completely unselfconscious of his state of dishabille.  Rey came to the firm and deliberate decision that if he didn’t care if she saw his penis, she didn’t care if she saw his penis.  That would make their living arrangements a lot simpler. 

“Which beach?” he asked. There was a note of caution in his voice.

“Oh,” she said solemnly. “Whichever one is open, I guess.  Very tricky in Corpus Christi this time of year.  Algae blooms, you know.”  

He paused just long enough that she knew that he’d considered the possibility that she was not joking.  She slapped him lightly on the shoulder. 

“Don’t you want to be surprised?” she asked. 

“No.  I hate surprises.” 

Rey dropped her head onto his shoulder for just a second, savoring the moment.

“Hawaii!  We’re going to Hawaii. As far away as we can get without passports,” she told him.  He turned his purpling face to her.  His eyes crinkled at the corners as her words sunk in. “Far away from everything else,” she promised.

 * * * 

Kylo’s black sweatshirt was tight across his chest, and his new blue jeans hung loosely over his hips, but Rey saw zero problems with that.  The TSA agent at airport security was a little skeptical of their last-minute tickets and she squinted at Kylo in suspicion.

“What happened to your face there, sir?” she asked. 

“Nose job,” he said, deadpan.  “My girlfriend wanted me prettier.”  

The firmly rounded woman snorted and shook her head as she handed their tickets back to them. 

“At least you ain’t laying out that ‘deviated septum’ bullshit.  Good for you,” she said. 

Hawaiian Airlines flew direct from Alderaan to Lihue.  Two same-day first-class tickets cost nearly enough to buy a decent used car, but Rey’s reward was that even Kylo seemed a little impressed when they boarded first and got a look at their space-age capsule seats.  He barely said a word about the possibility of chartering a private jet instead.

Rey’s first impulse was to play it cool all the way from bag check to liftoff, but she abandoned the pretense that she’d ever flown before when claiming the window seat.  Everything delighted her: the tiny glasses of champagne, the bowls of warm nuts, and especially the miniature hygiene kits in her seat back compartment.  She pressed her nose against the plastic of the window and watched as the rising sun illuminated the long wagon-trains of baggage carts. 

Kylo tossed a blanket over her. 

“You should probably get some sleep,” he told her.  “It will still be morning when we land in Lihue.  If you want to make it to the beach today, you should rest.” 

Rey raised her eyebrows at him.  “That’s surprisingly sensible of you.  I thought you were going to make a crack about joining the mile-high club instead.”

Kylo pretended to consider it. 

“I’m in if you are,” he replied, suggestively flapping his blanket over his lap.  “But you should probably wait until we reach cruising altitude.  I’d hate to explain how you broke your tailbone during turbulence.” 

Rey answered by sticking out her tongue at him, fishing her batik-print eye-mask out of her hygiene kit, and raising the privacy screen between their seats.  She waited until just after liftoff so that she could savor the sight of Texas shrinking away below them.  There was nothing holding them back.  They were flying.

 * * * 

Rey did manage to sleep quite a bit, cocooned in her premium bedding and curled flat on her seat.  She awoke to a steward bringing around glasses of guava juice and necklaces of fresh orchids in anticipation of their arrival.  

Kylo tried to duck the second of these but Rey collected his for him and dropped it around his neck, disregarding his grumpy noises of protest. 

“Now you can say that you did get lei’d on the flight,” she told him.  “Get it?”

He seemed to smile despite himself before he could crush it under his usual impassive scowl. 

“You should write that down. I’m sure nobody’s ever made that exact joke here before.”  

When they landed, the air was humid and soft with the smell of flowers and the distant sea.  Rey stopped even before they reached the baggage claim and lifted her face to the breeze.  The airport did not have windows; the island’s scents drifted through even as the passengers hurried to their destinations.  Which led to a different thought.

“Crap,” she said.  “I forgot to rent a car.”  Rey had watched YouTube videos about how to plan a vacation, but...

Kylo shrugged.  “I’m sure the St. Regis has a shuttle,” he told her.

She frowned.  “We’re not staying at the St. Regis,” she told him. 

Kylo seemed to be searching his memory as they located their baggage carousel. 

“Are we staying at the Grand Hyatt?”  

“Nope,” Rey said.

Kylo stopped in his tracks, face now very concerned.

“We’re not staying at the Marriott…are we?”  Kylo's tone suggested that a four-star resort was equivalent to a stint in the Niima lockup.  

“Nooooo,” said Rey.  “We’re not staying in a hotel.  Wouldn’t you get bored eating room service three meals a day? I rented a house.  We’ll have plenty of room.”

“You…rented a house,” Kylo said, squinting at her.  Rey abruptly recalled that he seemed to have very strong and fixed ideas about architecture and décor. 

“On Airbnb, yeah,” Rey said. “Don’t worry, I talked to the two owners.  They’re on vacation in Hong Kong this month.  They were super nice. And the house is great--it’s right over the water.  On a cliff.” 

“Uh huh,” Kylo said, his doubts evident. 

“If you hate it, we can check into a hotel,” Rey said soothingly.  “But I saw a YouTube video about going to the fishmarket and grilling your own fish.   You’d like that, right?” 

He perked up a little at that thought.

“We can charter a boat and go sport-fishing,” he declared.  

Sure, Rey thought.  If that was a thing, she was ready for it. She was ready for all the new experiences.  Kayaking. Snorkeling.  Luaus and pig roasts.  There was nothing she’d seen in the dozens of slickly-produced tourism videos about the North Shore of Kauai that she didn’t love the idea of. 

She and Kylo took a shuttle to the rental car complex and approached one at random without a line.  There were a pair of young men in floral magenta shirts urgently peering at the same computer screen.  After they greeted her with a subdued ‘Aloha,’ Rey tentatively asked whether she could rent a car without a reservation.

The first man wiped his forehead wearily. 

“Oh sure.  Lots of inventory right now, and I’m happy to get one off the lot.  You’ll want a four-wheel drive, right?”

“Uh, right,” Rey said. “That sounds great.”  She gave a tight smile up at Kylo. 

Kylo drummed his fingers on the counter.

“Why do you have a lot of inventory right now?  Is the summer season going yet?” he inquired.

The second man pointed behind them to a large flat-screen TV mounted to the wall of the waiting area. The screen depicted a weather map. The local meteorologist was on mute, but her body language and circling hands got the point across nonetheless. Her object of concern was a trio of three green round swirls like pearls on a necklace. 

“Oh, everyone’s leaving early on account of the hurricanes,” the second man said.  “So you can take your pick.  Hey, you guys got your supplies in?  Storm lanterns and stuff?  It’s supposed to be as bad as Lane, maybe as bad as Hurricane Iniki.  Hope you like peanut butter and cold soup."  

* * * 

Kylo wanted to turn around and fly somewhere else, even though the rental car agents assured them that most flights would be sold out.  Kauai, still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Lane, was rapidly depopulating.

Rey thought it sounded like an adventure.  Or at least that they should treat it as an adventure. 

She pasted a smile on her face and heaved both of their new suitcases into the back of their SUV. She kept up a stream of meaningless chatter as they got groceries at a nearly-bare and ransacked Costco.  Kylo said little as they stocked the car with bottled water and crackers, seeming to slip back into the dark mood that had possessed him since leaving his apartment. 

The radio was playing nothing but storm news, so Rey turned it off and rolled down the window.

It was very beautiful. 

The sky was still clear and blue, even if the waves were all tipped with white where they stormed the golden beaches.

The mountains were greener than Rey’s mind—born in the dust of Jakku—could have imagined.  

People lived and died here. Why did anyone live in Jakku when they could live among green jungles and blue ocean?

Kylo pushed his new Ray-Bans over his swollen nose and shut his eyes behind them. 

Rey called Finn to fill the silence. 

“Hey babe, can you do me a big favor?” she asked him.  From the background noise he was watching a baseball game.  His voice was distracted when he answered.

“Sure thing, whatcha need?” Rey was usually in a position to do favors for Finn: dropping off groceries, sharing her Netflix subscription, picking him up from parties. 

Rey asked him to take her scheduled lunch with the assistant DA, Rose Tico, and find out if she was partnering with any existing non-profits to provide services to her foster care witnesses. 

Finn protested weakly until Rey admitted that she was going to kill two birds with one stone and have him fulfill her promise to Paige Tico.  Then he protested strenuously.

“You set me up with _a cop_?” he wailed. 

“No, no, she’s a lawyer,” Rey tried to soothe him.

“Do you even hear yourself,” Finn moaned. 

“Umm,” Rey said, eyeing Kylo to determine whether he was asleep.  “I’ve really got a lot going on right now.  Could you please do this for me?  She’s cute.  She’s super cute.” 

“Then you date her,” Finn muttered.  Rey sighed, feeling frustrated. 

“Look, I’m in Hawaii with Kylo, and apparently I picked the middle of hurricane season,” she said.  “Will you just put on your big boy underwear and take her for drinks somewhere?  Use my emergency card.”  

“You..what?  You’re where?”  Finn sounded like he was working himself up to a real sputter, but just as Rey hit the Poipu town limits, cell reception got spotty and she had the excuse to cut the call short. 

Kylo turned his head and looked at her over the tops of his sunglasses.  Rey shook her head and kept her eyes on the road.

* * *  

The key was hidden, as promised, in a wrought iron gecko sculpture beneath the elevated lanai. Rey unlocked the screen door and then the front door. 

“Well,” said Rey, gazing around the living room of the condo as they entered.  “Their use of geckos as a unifying theme certainly brings all the décor together, don’t you think?”

“I changed my mind,” said Kylo.  “I’ll take my chances back in Alderaan.” 

The furniture was covered in a cheerful hibiscus print.  The walls were painted in a soothing robin’s egg blue.  Everything was neat and clean.  Though Rey could see how Kylo would object to the sheer number of gecko knickknacks.  Geckos peeked out of faux floral arrangements, adorned throw pillows, and marched across shelving in glass and wood and ceramic.  

She disregarded Kylo’s low-key bitching and directed him to unpack their clothes while she checked on the hurricane on her phone. She bit her lip.  It would make landfall that evening.  

Kylo walked back out of the bedroom. 

“This place isn’t safe,” he announced.   “The water will come right through those louvre windows in the bedroom if we get a lot of wind.  We should go to the St. Regis.” 

“A convenient conclusion,” Rey muttered.  She hated the idea of staying in a hotel full of strangers, with maid service coming in and out of her sleeping space.  Eating meals in restaurants.  Passing people in the halls. 

“Let me see what the owners say,” Rey told him, stalling for time. 

When she checked her e-mails, she found a concerned message from the condo’s owners with a lengthy list of storm preparations.  

“Oh good,” Rey said.  “They have storm windows in the storage shed. We can just install those.” 

Kylo blinked at her in disbelief.  “You want to do home improvement on someone else’s house instead of going to a nice hotel?” 

“You afraid of a little hard work?” Rey teased him.

Kylo pointed at his chest. “Sugar baby,” he reminded her. 

Rey tried to give him a sultry look.  “You look like a man who knows his way around a tool.”  She giggled a little and ruined whatever effect she might have had. 

Kylo leaned against the doorframe to the bedrooms and crossed his arms against his wide chest.  He’d changed out of his travel clothes into a plain grey v-neck t-shirt, which was apparently the least objectionable item of clothing Rey had purchased for him. 

“What do I get if I install the damn storm windows?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Um, to sleep in a dry bedroom?” she suggested.  He shook his head.

“They have dry rooms at the St. Regis,” he pointed out.

“Oh, um.  You want extra money?”

He shook his head again. “No, as we discussed, I am not fee for service.” 

Rey pursed her lips.  “I’m not sure what you want, then.”  

Kylo began to walk across the room towards her, his face intent.  Rey swallowed hard.  He looked up and down her body.  

“Hmmm,” he said, his voice still casual.  This was a negotiation.  Like buying a house.  “Has anyone ever licked your pussy until you came?” 

“I-“ Rey stuttered. The answer was no.  Of course not.  The boys of Jakku County classed the female orgasm alongside global warming and evolution: theoretical concepts of dubious relevance and suspicious liberal provenance. “What would be in it for you?” 

He reached her, standing close enough that she imagined she could feel the heat from his body.

“To be the first?” he said, leaning over her and pressing his face against the side of her head, lips against her ear.  “To know what you look like when you come.  What you taste like.  The noises you make.” 

“I-“ Rey licked her lips. She felt a little dizzy.  She clenched her hands into fists so hard that her nails cut into her palm.  Self-control. She had self-control.  She had promised to take care of him.  

Kylo tilted his head, and she could now feel his breath directly against her ear.  

“You don’t want me to?” he asked.

Rey lifted a hand and touched one of the bruises on his cheek.  He winced. 

“Your face,” she said lamely. 

Kylo leaned away from her. “Forget it,” he said roughly.  “Where are the storm windows?  Looks like the wind is already starting.”

Out the window, Rey could see the dark squall line past the reef break on the horizon.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut next chapter I prommmmmmise. 
> 
> Kink-shame me @YTCShepard on Twitter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time on SHH, Rey took the wounded Kylo from Alderaan to Kauai. Just in time for hurricane season.

The first hurricane was kind of a bust.  It veered south of the islands before dissipating into thick clouds that enfolded Kauai like wet moss.  It rained all day, every day. 

Rey learned a lot about Kylo. 

He ate 6 eggs every morning. Sometimes he scrambled them. Sometimes he boiled them.  On one memorable occasion he coddled them and served them over turkey hash.  He wasn’t a natural chef, but he knew a number of recipes by heart.  He liked to take a shower in the morning and a bath in the evening.  He enjoyed the original Twilight Zone and the first six seasons of the Game of Thrones. He was a frequent, unapologetic nudist. He had never voted. 

Mostly they stayed in their house.  There wasn’t anything else to do in Kauai while it rained. 

They played board games, though Kylo was not a good loser at anything but chess.  Kylo taught Rey to play poker.  They watched TV.  Rey taught Kylo how to make a bong out of an apple and a Sprite can.

Kylo went a little stir-crazy.  

He tried jogging even in the rain, but came back 20 minutes later covered from ankle to hip in slick red dirt.  After that, he settled for a kind of prison-yard calisthenics routine that Rey could have sold tickets to.  Though she could only stand to watch him do one-handed pushups for so long before she had to retreat to the bathroom to masturbate furiously. 

The second hurricane fizzled into a tropical depression well before making landfall, but the rain was sufficient to wash out their cliff road to Princeville.  They had enough supplies on hand for quite a while, but being cut off from even the grocery store and pharmacy made Kylo grumpier. 

As did the celibacy. He made no bones about his preferred indoor activities, and they did not include Parcheesi. 

The third hurricane was the one the meteorologists got really exercised about.  It was hooking around west of Ni’ihau and projected to come back for the North Shore at a Cat 3.  Rey put the news on mute on the bedroom TV before they went to bed. 

The same bed.  There were two bedrooms in the house, but it was always the same bed.

Kylo’s severe profile was in repose when the storm shook Rey awake.  The house was on pillars that swayed as the gale shook and rumbled outside. The green-white glow from the silenced television made Kylo’s pale skin unearthly and luminous. 

The coverlet had slipped down his body to his navel.  He had one arm tossed across his stomach and the second propped behind his head, exposing the smooth expanse of his bicep to Rey’s greedy eyes.  

She savored the opportunity to look at him unobserved. 

She didn’t think she moved the bed.  She thought she was very careful.  She was not really trying to…she was just pressing one hand against the outside of her underwear when Kylo’s eyes cracked open.  She froze, caught. 

“You’re killing me, princess,” Kylo said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawning theatrically as he awoke. He set his big hand down on her hip, just where her t-shirt was bunching up over the band over her underwear.  “Now?”  His slow smile nearly killed her resolve.  

He rolled closer to her to kiss her with soft, gentle lips.  His tongue moved against her mouth at an unhurried pace. 

“I can’t,” she said, will cracking as she pulled away.  His hands and eyes pursued her.  

“Rey, Rey, sweetheart. You know I would make it good for you. Even if it’s never been good before, you know I would make it good for you,” he told her earnestly, his dark eyes now intent on her. 

She knew that.  She had not a single doubt about that. 

“It’s not that at all,” she whispered, putting a hand over his.   “I just want you to have a choice,” she said.  “I know what it’s like to be stuck.  With nowhere to go.  You do what you have to do, say whatever you have to say- and hope to hold on to just a little bit of yourself. I don’t want you to think you have to.  I promised you.  I meant it. You really don’t have to.  And the only thing I can think to do is show you I’ve got a place for you anyway. Even if we don’t-”

Kylo didn’t break eye contact during her stuttered little speech.  But neither did he agree.  

“You’re not making me do anything,” he said.

“Aren’t I?  You seem…you don’t have somewhere else to go. I don’t want you just to be- grateful, I guess.  Obligated. Or afraid.”

He winced away from her at that, and Rey worried that she’d insulted him.  He rolled his muscular shoulders as he considered what she’d said. 

“I’ve always had a choice,” he said, after a minute’s thought.  “I’ve always seen that more clearly than anyone else.”  He rubbed his hand over his face, staring at the television. Then he turned back to her, seeming to regain a little of his resolve. 

“You think I wouldn’t fuck you for free, is that it?” he asked, looming over her. 

“I don’t know.  That’s the problem, isn’t it?  I wouldn’t know.  I’m paying you to be here.  I’m practically your boss,” Rey said, in a burst of inspiration.

Kylo arched an incredulous eyebrow.  “You are _not_ my boss,” he said. 

“But-“ Rey began to protest again, running a gentle finger along the scabbed scratch on his cheek. She thought back to his expression as he leaned against the passenger window. 

Kylo gave a huff of frustration and settled on his back again.  The rain continued to rattle the windows; Rey couldn’t hear her heart or breath.  

“Fine,” he said. “How about this then.”  He stood up, pressing the large bulge in his underwear against his body with one hand as he stepped to the dresser.  He retrieved his wallet from the top drawer.  “I’ll pay _you_ if you’re so worried about coercing me into bed.” 

Rey’s startled gasp turned into a laugh.

“But you’re broke! How can you…”

He cut her off with his tongue in her mouth. 

“Will twenty dollars get me into your panties?” he asked when he pulled away. “I’m not sure if that’s market, but I’d hope for a nice discount on the prospect of a volume business.”  

“I’m positive it’s worth more than that,” Rey deflected.  She was certain there was some kind of logical flaw in his argument, but she was damned if she could find it while he was kissing her like that.  He very ostentatiously tucked the crisp bill from his wallet into the side of her underwear, making her snort in amusement. 

“You drive a hard bargain,” he said.  “I’ll pay another twenty, but I want access to your tits too.” 

He grasped the hem of her shirt to pull it up, but Rey stilled it with her own. 

“I’m not for sale a la carte,” Rey said, repeating his own words back to him.  The corners of his mouth twitched up.  Rising to his knees, Kylo straddled her hips with his own.  He grabbed his wallet and began tossing bills out. They fluttered down over her body. He plucked then out one by one, smiling as she was adorned by the growing pile.  

“Take it all, but then I want it all,” he said, eyes darkening as he looked down over her.  He squashed the notes between them as he lowered himself over her again.  Rey didn’t bother to brush them aside as she returned his kiss with interest and wove her hands into his hair. 

He was touching her in earnest now.  Kylo’s big hand wrapped around the inside of her thigh. He slid it slowly up her leg until his forefinger rested against the cotton of her panties.  His finger stroked back and forth minutely until Rey’s back arched away from him.  He slipped one finger under the elastic band and dragged it through her wet folds.  His eyes widened; Rey supposed he’d been expecting to work harder for it. 

“Flattering, assuming that's for me," he said, fingertip parting outer labia and inner labia to circle her entrance. 

“Nobody else here but the 50 ceramic geckos,” she whispered. 

“Right,” he said.  “I have a plan for that.”   He grabbed the edge of the sheet he’d kicked to the foot of the bed and pulled it over them both like a tent.   “Nobody in here now but you and me.  The rest of the world can blow itself up or burn itself down.”  

He grasped her underwear over both hips and began dragging it down her legs.

Rey could hear the wind howling through the window frames and crackling around the seams of the house. Rain fell in sheets, making a sound like a furious beast crouched on the roof and scratching at the shingles for admittance. 

As Kylo kissed a line over her hipbone, Rey heard a louder crash from the kitchen.  She sat up, pushing Kylo back to the foot of the bed and the bedlinens to the floor.  Kylo looked over his shoulder, then back at her, narrowing his eyes.  He put his hand against her stomach and pushed her back down on the bed. 

“Don’t worry about it. It will still be broken in the morning,” he told her.  

“What if all the geckos come in?” she protested. 

“They can watch us fuck,” Kylo bit out, his fingertips pressing against her belly over her t-shirt. 

They stared at each other for an electric second while the noise of the storm echoed through the house. The sound of the rain and wind was inside too; whatever had broken in the kitchen was admitting the hurricane into the house.  The tension pushed Rey closer and closer to him until the last slender thread of her restraint snapped like a rubber band.  She and Kylo met halfway in a collision of lips and tongues and teeth.  

Rey stripped her shirt off and tossed it away.  

She didn’t think her tits were worth 20 dollars for the experience, but Kylo seemed determined to get his money’s worth.  His tongue swept a broad stripe up from her ribcage across one breast, and then the other. 

At the same time, he was touching her cunt with fingers more deft than delicate.  He pushed one long forefinger inside and spared a glance up at her face, a contemplative expression on his own. 

“This is going to be spectacular,” he confided.  Rey nodded. 

He had a way of touching her in multiple places at once: his thumb rubbing her clit, one finger crooking inside, and his knuckles pressed against her entrance.  It had Rey’s eyes nearly crossing after only a few minutes of effort on his part. 

“Watch me,” he said, when she would have closed her eyes.  Keeping her in his sights, he pulled his hand away, causing her to whimper at the loss.  He smirked at her again. 

“Patience,” he said, before settling back down over her legs and burying his face between her thighs.  

Oh, this was new and wonderful.  More wonderful than she’d imagined.  And when she’d imagined it, she’d thought of little licks, as with a popsicle, or an ice cream cone.  But at least the way Kylo did it, it was more like kissing.  Not proper, front-door goodbye kisses.  Dirty ones in the back of the car, when nobody else could see you. His lips and tongue and entire face were involved.  And through it all, until the moment he wrapped his lips around her clit and _sucked_ …he was watching her under his dark lashes, looking up her body to see how she twisted and moaned.    Rey nearly bit down on her lower lip when she came, but she recalled that the storm would swallow whatever noise she made.  So when her body began to shake and sparkle under his mouth, she opened her own lips and just let her voice catch whatever words it could. 

Kylo slipped two fingers into her when she closed her eyes and laid them back on the pillow.  Her skin felt hot and sensitive across her chest and upper arms, but the liquid glide of his two fingers was more comforting than anything else.  It was reassuring, to have him inside her.  Close.  Companionable, almost. 

His movements were slower now, more deliberate.  Making her come had given him a shot of confidence, Rey thought.  A margin of control.  

Her body clenched involuntarily around his fingers as he hit a particularly sensitive spot inside her, and she grunted in surprise. 

“Don’t you want to-“ she managed to gasp out as she looked down at the hand he had buried in her cunt. He seemed perfectly content to simply wind her back up again.  He was the picture of comfort as he propped his head on one hand and worked her with the other. 

“You want something else?” he asked, voice deliberately unconcerned.

“Well.  You seemed to be under the impression we were going to give the geckos a show.”

He snickered.  “Oh, you think the _geckos_ will be disappointed if you don’t take my cock?” 

Rey nodded solemnly. She was going to come again if he kept touching her like that, and then she was going to need something of a rest, she thought. 

 “Okay, then,” Kylo said, rolling to his back and pushing his briefs off his hips.  His cock sprang free, much darker and more insistent than his tone would indicate.  Kylo arched an eyebrow while Rey stared at it, mentally comparing his size to what she knew she could handle and coming up a bit short.

“Well?” he said, making a languid gesture down his chest to the unspoken effect of ‘hop on.’  His expression was challenging; he expected her to blush, or hide her face, or beg him to take control again.

Well, Rey made it a point not to back away from challenges.  

Giving him the smallest shrug of her shoulders, she tossed a leg over his hips and pinned his cock between their stomachs.

She leaned forward and kissed him firmly on the lips, pulling away with a smack.  They were wet and swollen, and she knew why.  Her own lower lips were wet and soft against the underside of his cock as she settled herself over him and found her balance with her palms against his wide and solid chest. 

His hair was spread against the pillow, and pride and surprise warred for dominance on his face.  

“You look very pretty like this,” Rey told Kylo, inching forward until she could just catch the tip of him against her. 

“I know,” he sighed, reaching up to capture both her breasts in his hands.  He held her nipples between his first two fingers as Rey carefully lifted her hips to slide onto the first inch of him.  And then she held there; the broad, slick head of his cock was wider than anything she’d ever tried to take into her body.

“It’s all in now, isn’t it?” she teased him.  “Because this feels about right.”  She laughed at the small expression of incredulity that flashed across his face before she slid down another inch.

He muttered blasphemy under his breath while trying to pull her hips further onto him.

“Oh,” she said, when her cunt finally hit his stomach and his balls were cradled under her ass. She stared down at her stomach as though she could see him inside her.  She was completely tight around the base of his cock, but he was moving minutely. Not thrusts but vibrations. She leaned back a fraction to assess the slip of him through her body.  It felt easy.  Natural.

Kylo sighed when she lifted herself off an inch and slid back down.  The next time she did it, he met her halfway.  Finding a rhythm was effortless.  Kylo held her hip with one hand while the other traced her breasts and sides.  When she closed her eyes and began to rub her clit against his pubic bone, he slipped that free hand between them to play with her clit.

“Can you come like this?” he asked her, his voice evidencing no strain.  

She didn’t know.  She hadn’t ever. 

“Yes,” she told him, and he nodded.  His thumb circled her a few moments more until her thighs tightened around his hips. He moved through it as the tension in her core wound to a climax and dissolved in a slower, warmer series of vibrations. When she opened her eyes again, Rey realized that she didn’t know what to do at this point.  Kylo’s hips were maintaining their same steady rhythm as he moved beneath her.  Sex, in Rey’s experience, was over in 90 seconds of vigorous thrusting, whether she tried to move anything or not.  But Kylo seemed to be feeling no urgency to reach any particular destination. 

“I- I just came again,” she told him.

“I know,” he said, brushing a hand over her stomach and settling it on her hip. 

Well.  Of course he did.  He’d been right there too.

“What should I-“ Rey closed her eyes as he thrust up into her again.  It didn’t hurt, exactly, but the unused muscles in her thighs were beginning to burn with the strain of holding her upright.  She swallowed.

“What should I do?” she managed to get out.  Kylo’s eyes were dark as he looked up at her. 

“Pull my hair,” he commanded. 

Rey reflexively reached out to comply, but found herself stroking her hand along his cheek first. She ran her thumb over his cheekbone before carding it out through his hair.  She gave a tentative tug on the roots before anchoring her palm on the pillow next to his head.  The new angle was a little easier for her to hold, but it let him slip in and out across his entire length. 

“What else,” she mumbled.  The feeling of him moving through her drove almost every thought from her head.

“Tell me-“ Kylo said, strain finally creeping into his voice.  He seemed to change his mind mid-sentence. 

“Tell me I’m a whore. Tell me you’re using me.  Say I’m worthless.  Call me names,” he encouraged her.  

Rey’s eyes snapped open. From this position, she was only inches away from him.  His mouth was slightly open from effort as he snapped his hips up into her.   His eyes glittered as he looked at her.

“Kylo,”  she said softly.  She leaned further down so that they were chest to chest.  “I don’t think I can say that.  I don’t think you’re…Kylo, I think you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

His hands tightened on her body. 

“Shouldn’t I say…this is the best?  You’re so good at this, Kylo.  Because you’re good.  You’re good at everything you do.  And you’re good to me,” Rey babbled, not entirely sure of what coming out of her mouth but trying to expose some of what was in her heart and head to him. 

Kylo grabbed her by the shoulders and tipped her off of him.  She didn’t even have a moment to process the sudden emptiness between her legs before he was rolling her onto her back and sliding back inside her. 

“Stop,” he growled into her neck, and Rey immediately stilled.  “Stop saying things,” he amended, wrapping an arm beneath her body to push her body up against his.  Rey gasped at the force of his next thrust and bit her lower lip to silence herself. 

It was different from this angle, or maybe Kylo was different.  He seemed to be trying to press their bodies against each other over every inch of skin.   His hips slapped against hers with a violence she could hear even over the noise of the storm.  His breath was raspy in Rey’s ear, with the wetness of sweat or saliva or maybe tears. 

As deep as he was, she could feel the hot rush of his spend when he came.  He pulled her hips flush against his and stiffened for the drawn out moment, then smacked the headboard with a half-swallowed curse.  But he didn’t immediately move off of her.  Instead, his weight held her to the mattress as their heartbeats slowed in unison and he shrank from her body fraction by fraction. His face was still pressed to the side of her head.  She would have given half her fortune to know what he was thinking.  

When Kylo finally rolled off of her, he looked blindly up at the ceiling.  When his breathing normalized, he swung his legs off the bed and staggered to the restroom.  He was gone for a long time.  Rey was almost asleep by the time he returned.  He climbed back into bed without touching her.  When he spoke, it was barely loud enough for her to hear. 

“You have the wrong idea about me.” 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time on SHH, Rey and Kylo banged out their feelings while the hurricane tore through their vacation town of Princeville, Hawaii. Mind the warnings.
> 
> There is  ART by @skerft1 of Rey and Kylo at the gala in chapter 4!
> 
> This whole fic, but this chapter especially, benefitted greatly from the loving touch of my patron and landlady, Jeeno2.

 

Rey woke up alone and later than she would have expected.  Yellow sun shot around the edges of the shutters at an angle that told her it was closer to lunch than breakfast. 

Rey never slept in; anxious guilt would drive her from her bed before retail hours even when she had no plans more pressing than deleting the morning’s deluge of BOGO and 20% off sales from national brands from her inbox.  

I am on vacation, she told herself.

Rolling to the edge of the bed set off a cascade of twinges and aches in her soft and pink parts that reminded her exactly what she’d been doing to cut into her nighttime rest hours. Her co-conspirator in such minor injuries was, however, nowhere to be seen.  

There was harsh wooden banging sound echoing from the front of the house, which led Rey to believe that Kylo wasn’t far away.  He was never quiet; Rey realized that she had already acclimated to a general background level of stomping and muttering and movement. 

Rey pulled clothes off the floor—his, hers--and went looking for the source of the noise.  The kitchen was bright and clean as though the storm had never come, but there was a new pile of…fruit? on the grey laminate kitchen island.  Rey squinted at it in surprise; she’d never seen bananas still on the stalk before, but there they were, along with two slightly withered limes and a pile of yellowish fruits she couldn’t positively identify. 

Rey looked away from this small wonder and out the front windows, catching a glimpse of Kylo on the lanai before he lifted a sheet of plywood over a gap in the window, occluding her view.  Rey picked up one of the yellow fruits and went out the front door. 

Kylo was perched on the railing, a hammer in one hand and his other holding the plywood against the window frame.  He had a large bunch of nails held between his lips.  Rey recognized the anonymous grey t-shirt and basketball shirts he wore as her Target purchases, but he’d cut out the sleeves nearly down to his waist. There was a faint sheen of sweat over his arms and neck from the humid morning sun, and his hair was pulled out of his face with one of Rey’s hair-ties.  

Rey felt as though the malnourished muscles of her heart were flexing in her chest as she watched him narrow his eyes and secure the plywood to the window frame with one long nail, his triceps flexing as he hammered. 

When Rey bought her big house, with its six empty bedrooms and big beige walls, she’d had the blurry, distant idea that someday it would be full of people and color and noise.  She didn’t have a plan, exactly.  More of a hope.  But watching Kylo hard at work on the storm repairs, Rey found that one of those indistinct figures in the home of her mind had become sharp and clear. 

Kylo flicked his eyes in Rey’s direction to acknowledge her but did not speak until all of the nails were out of his mouth and the window was secured.  

He took a long swig from the half-empty bottle of Pacifico propped at his side before turning his attention at last to Rey. 

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” he said.  “Want me to cut up that papaya?” 

Rey stared at him for longer than his question merited.  The conversation she had been playing out with Kylo in her head since she awoke did not revolve around fruit, but she now found that she had no concept of how to make a graceful transition.

So instead of saying what she wanted to say to him, she said, “oh, is that what it is?  Where did you get it?” 

Kylo hopped off the railing, relieving her of the fruit and heading back into the house. 

“Well, when I saw that goddamn coconut had come through the window last night, I decided to survey the damage.  Found the fruit while I was out poking around.  The roads are mostly clear.” 

“The coconut,” Rey repeated.

“Yeah.”  He nodded towards a round object like a large green rock, currently propping open the screen door. 

Rey looked again at the fruit in his hand, down to the coconut, and over to the bananas in the kitchen.

“You…woke up and decided to do some hunting and gathering for me,” she clarified.  

Kylo pulled a cutting board from the cabinet and began slicing the fruit.  

“Gathering, at least. There were some feral chickens out, but fuck if I’d know what to do with one if caught it.” 

Rey shook her head and followed him to the kitchen.  He swatted her hand away as she tried to steal a slice of papaya off the board. Moving deliberately, he divided the papaya between two bowls and squeezed a quarter of a lime over each.  He handed her a bowl and spoon.  

Rey wrinkled her nose at him, then popped an entire segment in her mouth.  It was, of course, one of the most delicious things she’d ever put there. She swallowed very deliberately. 

“Right,” she said. “Right.  Kylo, are we going to talk about what you said last night?” 

Kylo paused and cocked his head away from her as though listening to the music from the small, battery-operated radio he’d set up on the lanai. 

“Hmm,” he said.  “What about?”  

“What a- Kylo, you know what about,” Rey said, flushing with the effort of forcing the words out.  

“Sorry, I don’t,” Kylo said, finishing his sliced papaya and carrying his bowl back to the sink. 

Rey hooked her bare ankles together and knit her fingers.

“What you said when we were- and after, Kylo-“

Kylo washed the bowl in the sink and set it on the rack to dry.  His shoulders hunched a bit, but he continued his work. 

“Thought you were old enough to know not to listen to shit guys say in bed,” he said.  He wiped his hands on a paper towel and tossed it in the trash. 

Rey gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t have been offended if he’d just wanted her to slap him around and pull his hair.  She wasn’t a baby.  She’d heard of kink.  It wasn’t like she had some kind of moral opposition to it.  She was more worried by the possibility that he wasn’t just saying weird shit to get off; he did believe what he’d said, and he wasn’t happy about it.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Kylo announced.

Rey reflexively looked away; she knew from experience now that Kylo shed his clothes wherever he happened to be standing when he decided it was time to bathe.  

“Right, avert your virgin eyes,” he said. 

Rey forced herself to look at him as he pulled off his clothing with elaborate nonchalance and padded toward the master bathroom. 

She followed him. 

“Kylo,” she said again, pressing her hand against his bare lower back and spreading her fingers upwards.  He paused, waiting. 

Rey went up on tiptoes, pressing her lips to the nape of his neck, the highest spot she could reach. She could taste the salt from his sweat on her lips.  Kylo went still for a long moment, and Rey thought she’d made another mistake.  Then he spun, catching her mouth with his own.  He kissed her deeply, and she caught the sweetness of the papaya and the tang of the lime juice on his lips. 

“Let’s go out on the ocean today,” he said.

 * * * 

Rey and Kylo drove down the twisting mountain road to Hanalei, passing taro fields and sugar cane stands.  The road thinned as they drove over the ancient metal bridge to the small town on the crescent bay.  There were fallen branches and palm fronds to mark the storm’s touch, but tourists and locals were out on the sidewalks, moving among the modest cluster of stores in the town center. 

They rented kayaks, donated to hurricane relief efforts, picked up invitations to a block party benefitting the North Shore community center, and generally checked into the rest of the world.  Rey had a dozen texts from Finn, consisting largely of facts about Rose Tico. 

 

<meeting with your DA person.  she asked if she could wear heels.  why does your cop need permission to wear heels. if u dont hear from me tomorrow pay my bail>

…

<OK she is not a cop>

 …

<did u kno Rose graduated from Alderaan too?  she has notes from prof Ackbar>

… 

<meeting Rose again tomorrow i dont understand what her program actually does>

…

<did u know Rose speaks four languages? amaze>

…

<gonna get coffee with Rose tomorrow she has good ideas about my senior paper.  u will like her>

 …

<is it ok if I cook at your place for Rose?>

Rey smiled down at her phone and tapped out some updates.   Still alive.  Hurricane over.  I had a threeway with Kylo and his feelings last night and we did it raw.  She erased this last one and wished Finn well on his date.  

Kylo was as adept at kayaking as everything else he did, and he took the literal laboring oar in the rear seat of the kayak.  They paddled down the Hanalei River and out to the bay, and the late afternoon sun sparkled off the calm waters around them.  Rey pulled her oar from the water and turned to grin at Kylo after he grunted with the exertion of pushing them past the breakers. 

“Look at me!” she yelped. “I’m in the ocean.  I’m out in the ocean, I can see mountains, and jungles, and fucking palm trees, and here I am!” 

Kylo smiled back at her under his sunglasses. 

“There’s a big world out there, and it’s all yours, princess.” 

Rey gave him a happy smile. “I never thought I’d even get the chance to leave the state.  See an ocean. Go anywhere.  Be anything.  And I guess I will, you know?  I can do anything I want.  I just have to figure out what I want.”

“You want to see a tropical paradise while it’s not being blown over, maybe we try the south Pacific next,” he said.  

“Ooh, yes, maybe one of those little huts over the water where you watch the fish through the floor,” she said.  He nodded encouragingly. 

“Have you been a lot of places?” Rey asked, thinking of his profile. He nodded again.  “Did you go for work, or…”  She broke off, thinking that it might not be an appropriate question.  He didn’t seem bothered.

“Work, mostly.  Though I actually went to Hawaii with my family when I was young.  Not this island.” 

“Oh?” Rey asked, trying to keep her tone casual.  “What do you remember?”  

“Not that much.  When we got here, I spent the whole day building sandcastles on the beach.  My mother told me to come in, but I didn’t listen.  I had moats and a water folly and a tower with turrets…I got so sunburned. It blistered later.” 

Rey barely trailed her paddle through the ocean, listening intently. 

“I was feverish already that night.  We went to one of those luaus they put on for tourists, with dancers and fire-eaters.  I couldn’t tell what was real or not.  I cried.  My father carried me home.” 

Kylo sighed heavily.  “I had to stay inside for two days while my skin peeled off.  When they finally let me back out, it was all washed away.” 

Rey dipped her paddle back in the water and resumed their travel towards Bali Hai.  She wondered whether it scared Kylo too.  The idea that his range of human connections were so small, and his deeds were so shallow, that if he slipped off the earth tomorrow, it would be as though he’d never been there at all. 

Maybe that was just her. 

“Can I take a picture here?” Rey asked, fumbling her phone from her purse at the bottom of the boat. She lifted it high over her head; the angle wasn’t great, with the sun, but she captured herself and Kylo grinning toothily beneath their sunglasses and hats.  Behind them, nothing but open ocean. 

 * * * 

Kylo wasn’t wearing a swimsuit to the block party.  Instead, he’d acquired a black linen shirt from somewhere in Hanalei, and he looked dressed for a cocktail lounge rather than a swim.  Rey pouted at him as she pulled a grey t-shirt dress over her new bikini.  

“The flier said it was a pool party.  What’s the point of a pool party if nobody swims?” 

Kylo drifted closer to her and snatched at the knot tying her top shut behind her neck before she swatted his hand away. 

“If you want to wear a bikini to this thing, I’ll support you,” he said.  “I’m just warning you that nobody over the age of sixteen actually swims at a pool party.” 

Rey thought that was pretty lame.  

He wasn’t bitching as much as Rey would have expected though; it wasn’t like she thought she’d enjoy a party with a bunch of strangers who were likely several decades her senior, but she wanted to learn more about the Skywalker Foundation, the community center’s sponsor.  She was suspicious about Kylo’s motives, however.

“Why aren’t you complaining about this party?” Rey asked as they set off for the house on foot. According to her location app, it was less than two miles away, along the coast.  The evening was soft and fragrant with the damp earth, and it would have been a waste to drive.  

“I don’t complain that much,” Kylo protested, looking wounded.  Rey didn’t bother to contradict him; self-knowledge was not one of his strongest suits.  He worked his jaw. 

“I want to see the house,” he confessed.  “There are some fantastic ones along this road; I hope it’s one of the big Spanish colonial custom builds.”

“Ah,” Rey said, smiling at him.  “I knew there had to be a catch to get you out there even if nobody’s wearing a swimsuit.”

Kylo arched his eyebrows at her.  “It will take me 20 minutes to see the entire thing, and then we can go home and I’ll play with your tits through that little bikini while we catch up on the Chernobyl miniseries.”

“A modest plan,” Rey said noncommittally. 

* * * 

It wasn’t hard to find the correct house; it was more of an “estate,” as Rey understood it, than a “house.” There was a long hedge of hibiscus leading to a valet stand, where young men in uniform polo shirts sprinted down the block, securing a fleet of luxury sedans that had already disgorged their casually-dressed passengers.  

Past the front pillars, Rey took a moment to absorb the complex of open-air pavilions: local brown basalt formed half-walls, over which mahogany wood pillars supported roofs thatched with palm fronds and richly carved ceilings.  Kylo made an appreciative noise. 

The music was supplied by a singer accompanying himself on a ukulele.  There were a number of small dry bars scattered around the pool, and a few dozen guests in sundresses and shorts mingling in small groups nearby. 

Rey craned her neck until she located the organizer, who had her hands full with a platter of mai tais. Rey rescued the tray before it fell into the swimming pool, and had her meet-cute with Amilyn Holdo, the homeowner and founder of North Shore Public Trust, a local affiliate of the Skywalker Foundation.  

Amilyn was lovely, warm, and millions of miles beyond Rey’s experience.  The tall woman pressed a drink into Rey’s hands drew over waiters bearing barbequed shrimp skewers, tuna wontons, and other tiny delicacies.  Rey’s questioning was bitten out with her usual lack of grace, but it did not take much to get Amilyn talking about fundraising to rebuild the community center.  

Rey’s head began to swim as Amilyn described her plans. She had so many ideas Rey had never even considered; classes for the elderly, the disabled, single parents.  Rey bobbed her head vigorously, hoping that she was absorbing what Amilyn was casually spelling out for her.  Rey would have feared that she was monopolizing the attention of the host, but Amilyn seemed content to talk as long as she had an active listener in Rey.  And Rey, for her part, was so caught up in it that it look her long minutes before she thought to wonder where Kylo had gone to.  

She made the excuse of needing a washroom, but as she circled the party area, her feet grew heavy and leaden when she found Kylo: he was in heated conversation with a tall, slim woman with a shining cap of black hair and a silk pareo twisted around her neck and belted with a silver cord to serve as a dress.  Something unhappy twisted in her gut as she saw them; Kylo had never expressed any interest in interacting with a single other human being in the entire time she’d known him, she realized.  Rey had become accustomed to being the sole object of his interest. 

Kylo’s face was not welcoming when he saw Rey staring at them across the room, but she forced herself to approach anyway.  The woman with him turned as well; her face as she examined Rey bore only curiosity. 

“You didn’t come alone?” the dark-haired woman questioned Kylo.  “Your manners have slipped considerably.  I’m Bazine Netal.”  She held out a slim palm for Rey to shake, and handled it decisively. 

“Rey Kenobi,” Rey answered and watched as Bazine flipped through a mental rolodex, apparently coming up blank. 

“My girlfriend,” Kylo said, his tone cool and unwelcoming.  “We’re on vacation. Rey, did you find the sushi station yet?”  It was an invitation for Rey to leave the conversation, but Rey held her ground. 

“No professional interest in this area?” Bazine asked, turning her attention back to Kylo.

“None,” he repeated. “I’m satisfactorily unemployed right now.”

“I heard something about that,” Bazine said, studying him.  “But yet here you are, and here I am.  Seems too strange to be coincidental.”

Kylo’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been here for over a week. We booked the trip before the hurricane.” 

“I suppose your luck was always due to run out at some point,” Bazine said. 

“I don’t know that it has,” Kylo retorted.

Rey’s gaze was bouncing between the two of them like a ping pong ball.  She had no idea what they were talking about. 

“I wouldn’t, in any event, have imagined you would be the one Snoke sent.  I thought you were in Moscow for the duration,” Kylo continued.

Bazine shrugged.  “This is no hardship.  I’m not sure there’s anything up for grabs here, but not all of us have the resources to be choosy about the jobs we take.” 

“Going to Hawaii and looking for distressed real estate acquisitions wouldn’t ever have been a hardship,” Kylo said, frowning at Bazine.  “Which you know.  It was everything else.”

Bazine’s eyes were faintly pitying as she regarded Kylo.  “I know. But like I said, not everyone has the freedom to make your choices.” 

Kylo slugged back the ice-less drink in his hands without a wince.  “You’ve always got a choice, Baz.  Doesn’t mean you have good ones.” 

 * * * 

Bazine excused herself quickly thereafter, and Kylo shifted restlessly until Rey agreed to leave. His body was tight with nervous energy, but this manifested itself mostly in a distance both physical and emotional.  Rey could practically hear his teeth grinding as he ate up the distance from Amilyn’s estate to their rental cottage with quick strides of his long legs.  Rey practically had to trot to keep up with him.  She wanted to think about how she would adopt the same approach as the Skywalker Foundation in opening a series of community centers around Alderaan, but instead her thoughts were circling the growing mystery of Kylo. 

He volunteered nothing; he was a bundle of contradictions, of privilege and poverty.  He pushed her away and pulled her to him with equal intensity.  She wondered if he even knew how he wanted Rey to react to him.  Rey quickened her pace until she was back by his side. 

“So,” Rey said, trying to keep her tone neutral, “how do you know Bazine?”

“We worked together,” Kylo said, still looking down the dark, empty road.  

Rey made a non-committal noise, pressing her lips into a painful line.  There wasn’t much she could really do with that.  It wasn’t informative.  Bazine had said as much.

“Or did you want to know if I slept with her?” Kylo asked, a mocking note in his voice. 

Rey shot her eyes at him, unable to keep a grimace off her face.  “Did you?”

“Sweetheart, if we happen to meet someone I know, you should probably assume I fucked them,” he said, his full mouth twisting on the words.

Served her right, Rey thought, trying to push down the bitter wave of…jealousy?  What did she have to be jealous of Bazine for?  That she’d had him first?  That she’d had him, maybe, of his complete unfettered volition?  Rey didn’t have any claim on Kylo.  She was paying him to spend time with her, after all.  They’d slept together, which was Kylo’s habit on days ending in y.  Rey viciously dug her foot against a rock in the road as she walked, welcoming the small hurt.   

“What’s the point of it?” Rey finally cried.  “Why is it always about the sex, with you?”  

Kylo made a disgusted sound, but Rey caught the flash of hurt on his face before he covered it with his typical aristocratic dispassion. 

“Typically, because I like it,” he said, biting his words off very precisely.  “And if you _don’t_ \- or I’m not living up to your _expectations_ \- I suggest you use your words, princess, and tell me what you _do_ like.”  

His breathing was a little ragged by the end of that speech.  

Rey recoiled.  “You know that’s not what I meant,” she said immediately.  Kylo sneered at her, and let a little more space grow between them as he took greater strides with his longer legs. 

Rey gathered her thoughts together.

“It’s not what we did, Kylo. Ten points to Griffindor.  It was fine.  Best I’ve ever had, I’m sure you know that.  I just- I didn’t really think you _did_ like it.  So why-“

“Well, what the hell else do you think I should do?” Kylo cut her off.  He tugged at his hair in frustration. They were still half a mile from their rental; he looked around them, as though angry to be having the conversation in the middle of the road, even if they’d not seen a single car on their way.  They stood there for a moment in anxious silence.  There was no real way to end the stand-off.  They had to go home together.  

Kylo’s eyes fell on one of the many small, gated swimming pools that dotted the community.  The gate was closed; there were no streetlights nearby.  Kylo strode quickly to the gate and rattled it, finding it locked.  Undeterred, he sized up the gaps between the gate and the chain link fence that surrounded it.  He wedged a foot onto the hinge of the gate and used the leverage to agilely vault over and into the pool enclosure. 

“Kylo!” Rey hissed.  “That’s not even the pool for our rental!”  

He gave her a disdainful grin. 

“If anyone complains, you can buy this shitty little pool, and then we won’t be trespassing,” Kylo pointed out, pushing the emergency exit bar and opening the gate for Rey. 

She hesitated, only following when Kylo feinted that he would close the door with her on the outside.

The pool was bigger than the one at Rey’s house, but smaller than Olympic regulations.  Papaya and palm trees were planted along the rectangular enclosure, hopefully screening them from the road.  Only the half moon and brilliant stars provided any light. 

Kylo unselfconsciously shucked his clothes off before Rey could protest and dove like an arrow into the water.  With grace that was shocking for such a large man, he began kicking his way into laps at a quick pace, turning kick spins at each end of the pool after only a few strokes of his arms.  Rey watched, her eyebrows propped open in amazement. Kylo reminded her of a housecat on a tear, racing around the house to expel his nervous tension.  Kylo kept at it for perhaps ten minutes before letting up.  He sank down to the bottom of the pool, sitting there for longer than Rey felt comfortable with before bursting up from the bottom in a fountain of expelled air and wet hair. 

“Okay,” Kylo said at last, addressing Rey from within the pool. “Let’s talk about it.”  

Rey nodded at him, kicking off her sandals and sitting down at the edge of the pool, dangling her feet into the cool water.  She folded her hands in her lap expectantly. 

“You’re wearing a swimsuit. Come in,” Kylo said.  

“I can’t actually swim,” Rey confessed. 

Kylo scoffed at her.  “Why not?”

“Nobody ever taught me. No water in Jakku.” 

Kylo walked through the chest-deep water to her.  He held out his arms, palm up. 

“Jump down,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.” 

Rey nodded, obliging him, and tossed her dress onto the lawn.  She put her hands on his shoulders and slipped into the water, grateful that she had at least the cover of the bikini for the goosebumps breaking out across her body and pebbling her nipples.  

Kylo towed her to the middle of the pool.  It made her nervous; at her height, she would barely have her head above the water if he let go. 

His hands slipped down her body to her middle back, keeping her effortlessly aloft. 

“I’m going to put you on your back, and you’re going to float,” he told her. 

“I don’t know how,” Rey said tightly. 

“I’ve got you,” he reminded her.  “You’ll feel my hands under your back, but you’re going to float on your own.  Just keep your hips up and tight.”

He didn’t wait for her assent before pulling back on her shoulders.  Rey sucked in a deep breath, but her head didn’t go under.  Her feet floated up to the surface, and she tipped her head back. 

She felt the tips of each of his fingers below her lower back, reminding her to keep her hips up. But the water held her there, not Kylo. “Oh,” she said, amazed.  As long as she kept her head back and her eyes on the rising moon, she felt in no danger of sinking.  

Kylo lifted one hand to pull a loose piece of hair from her face before replacing it underneath her body. 

“There’s nothing between us and the North Pole,” he said.  “That’s why the stars are so bright.  No light pollution.”

Rey nodded, although the same had been true on the northern edge of Niima.  She hadn’t seen stars so bright since going to Alderaan.  She floated for a few moments in silence, listening only to the sound of her own breathing.  

His voice startled her when he began talking in a low, urgent tone.  

“I met Bazine’s boss when I was your age.  I was in school.  Going to class during the day, going out every night.  

“I was nineteen. Already dating Hux.  My parents weren’t thrilled that I was with him, so I was trying to figure out how I’d make the next semester’s tuition payment. On my own. 

Hux’ father worked for James Snoke.  You know who that is?”

Rey shook her head. Kylo gave a little huff of disbelief. “You will.  He owns the Snoke Organization--hotels…spas…resorts.  Brendol—Hux’ father--was his COO, went with him all over the world.  They’d take me and Hux along sometimes.  I loved it. It was everything I wanted.  We flew on private jets.  Ate at the best restaurants.  It was museums, clubs, always a party.”

Rey felt Kylo’s hands flex against her lower back. 

“One day Snoke and Brendol were talking about a new resort they were trying to open.  Construction wasn’t going well, and their lenders were unhappy.  They were going to lose a lot of money.  The local officials were not approving the permits they needed.  If they couldn’t get a power connection within the next week, they would miss their window.  The lenders might foreclose.

Brendol was pretty drunk. He was, a lot.  He took it out on Armitage…Hux.  Screamed at him.  Said if he was going to have a faggot for a son, it might as well do him some good, and Hux should go suck the energy minister’s dick and get the permit approved. He had a reputation, I guess.  Brendol started slapping Hux around, and Hux was crying.  That happened a lot.”  

Rey tried to keep her body aloft and still.  She didn’t want to have any sympathy for that terrible man.  But Kylo wasn’t done speaking. 

“So I said I’d do it.”

Rey’s breath finally froze. She tried to let her legs peak so that she could turn over and look at Kylo, but he moved his hands to her shoulders, kept her pointed away from him.  

“I did.  I did do it.  I went and met with him and I…got the permit.” 

Kylo let Rey fall back against his bare chest, and they stood there together, waist deep in the water, Rey feeling the violence with which Kylo’s chest expanded and contracted.

“I threw up, afterwards. I felt so sick.  It made me feel sick.  Dirty.  Like I’d never be clean again.  Like everyone who looked at me would know what I’d done, just from seeing it in my face. But then…Snoke and Brendol were so happy.  Armitage too, even, because his father was happy.  They took me out with them.  Bought me scotch, clapped me on the back.  Said I was a smart kid, had a nose for a business opportunity.  And I was…I was happy too, then.” 

Kylo shrugged elaborately, and Rey could feel it against the muscles of her back. 

“I kept working for them. Not like that, of course.  Not usually.  I fixed problems, started overseeing construction, logistics.  More and more.  Snoke paid me more money than I could have imagined having at that age.  I dropped out, worked for him full time.  When Brendol had a massive coronary while balls-deep in a teenage hooker in San Diego, I inherited his job.  Hux didn’t like that, but we weren’t really seeing each other anymore. I had so many people.  Men, women, anyone who wanted something from Snoke, or he wanted something from them.  I didn’t give a shit.” 

Rey gently reached behind her, found Kylo’s forearms.  She delicately brought them around her. Kylo sighed and dropped his head onto her shoulder, squeezing her between his upper arms.

“Until?” Rey prompted him. She knew there had to be something else. The transition between what he’d done and who he was.

“A lot of things I’d done were…not legal, or right on the line.  But nothing that hurt anyone.  I paid my taxes, anyway.  Paid the people I hired.  I wanted to make money, build the empire.  I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong.  Nothing different from what most people did to get ahead, I thought.”  He sighed.  “There was a new resort down in Houston.  Golf.  Day spa. I couldn’t get the numbers to work. Labor costs were too high.  Oil boom, I guess.  Nobody wanted to make beds and scrub toilets at a Snoke hotel when they could make five dollars more an hour doing the same thing out at a drill site. Snoke said he’d handle it, wanted to move me on to an all-inclusive in the Yucatan.  But I went back to the place after-hours, a week before the opening.  I thought it was going to fall apart, and we’d have the banks calling for our heads.  I heard yelling from down in the staff quarters.  The security guards told me it was nothing, but I went to check on it anyway.

“There were about two dozen of them.  Women, mostly.  Didn’t speak more than ten words of English among them, all terrified out of their skulls. They’d been promised jobs driving taxis or some shit, in Canada, not Houston, and they’d been locked in the laundry room for at least a few days.  That’s how Snoke figured he’d solve his labor issues. You don’t really have to pay much to people who don’t know where they are and can’t leave.” 

Rey clenched her teeth together, remembering Rose Tico’s speech.  “What did you do?”

“What do you think I did? No, don’t answer that.  You must think I’m a monster, after everything else I did.  I don’t want to know what you think I did.  I let them out.  Just propped open the door and left. Kept walking.  I didn’t call the cops, I didn’t try to help them, I just opened the door…and left.” 

His voice was dry and ragged after talking so much.  He let go of Rey and dove under the water.  Rey went to her tiptoes and made her way to the long side of the pool.  Kylo swam to the other end, did a neat flip, and swam back.  He propped his forearms on the concrete edge of the pool and turned to Rey.  His face was hollow and haggard when he looked back at her.  He was nearly ten years older than her, and at that moment she could see it. 

“Turns out the severance package is crap.  Baz is probably calling Snoke right now, so it’s about time for me to cut him another check.  I’m trying to make up the hole I blew in his budget to him, but as you can tell, it is _not going well_.”  He bit out the final words very fearsomely. 

Rey put her hands on his chest, cheek caught between her teeth.  Any sympathy she offered was likely to be thrown back in her face. Pity he would scorn.  She let out a whistling breath and tilted her head back. 

“You know I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” she whispered, putting a hand on his cheek. 

“That’s just because that’s the kind of person you are,” Kylo said, his eyes liquid in the moonlight. “You see something broken, and you want to fix it.” 

Rey shook her head, leaning up and pressing a soft kiss along his jawline.

“You can think that about me if you want, but I’m not that good,” she promised.  “It’s all very selfish.  It’s about how I feel when I’m with you. I don’t see how that makes me a good person.”  

The hard, taut line of Kylo’s crooked jaw softened when she said that.  He turned his head to kiss her palm, then pressed his mouth to her neck, and the knot holding up her top.  He tongued at the bow until it fell apart, exposing Rey’s breasts to the night air. His hands lifted her in the water so that he could lick circles around each nipple.  Rey’s eyes were half-lidded with pleasure already before he slipped one hand between her legs, peeling back her bikini bottom to the careful press of his fingers. A few moments later, Rey lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips so that he could delicately press inside her, the water making his movements soft and slow.  Kylo held her up against the wall of the pool with his hips flush against hers, barely moving inside her until her body began to shake around him.  He thrust up into her a few more times before coming on a curse and a grunt that could have been her  name.  He held her there for a long time, his body holding her up against the wall.  She felt the rabbit-run beat of his heart against her bare chest.  His eyelashes brushed her cheek as he slowly pulled his body out of hers. 

They didn’t speak on the remainder of the walk home, but Kylo carried his shirt in one hand, his bare chest dripping dry in the moist night air, and Rey’s hand carefully cradled in the other. 

Kylo went to hang Rey’s swimsuit to dry on the railing of the lanai when they returned to their rental. They had power and wi-fi again, in the time they’d been gone.

Rey checked her messages, expecting more Rose Tico facts from Finn. It was almost morning in Alderaan, and she wondered whether they were in her guest bedroom.

But there were three missed calls from Finn.  Messages too.  

<Call me when you get this>

<Some weird looking dudes showed up here looking for Kylo>

<Call me>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mentioned domestic violence, homophobic language, violence against immigrants, prostitution


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hello, how's everyone been? Me? Good. Good. Sorry it's been a while.
> 
> Recap in the chapter notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REY, upon inheriting many millions of dollars, moves from Jakku to Alderaan, the biggest city in Texas. There she and her former foster brother FINN attempt to set up a children's charity. Finn suggests she hire an escort to go with her to the charity ball circuit and learn more about the mysteries of rich people. 
> 
> Rey hires KYLO off a sugar baby website. Kylo promptly moves in, promising to help Rey navigate his former world. 
> 
> When Kylo's ex, HUX, confronts him, Rey intervenes violently. They decide to leave town, traveling to Hawaii- just in time for a hurricane. (This fic then earns its rating). After the hurricane, Kylo confesses that he quit working for mogul and developer SNOKE after growing frustrated with Snoke's shady business practices, which included human trafficking. 
> 
> Finn calls to report that he and his new girlfriend, assistant district attorney ROSE, have seen men come by Rey's house, looking for Kylo.

Rey began tossing clothes into a suitcase before Finn was even off the phone. 

Kylo watched her with his arms folded and his face unhappy.  He didn’t say a word while Finn narrated his escape from Rey’s house via the golf course it backed up to.  Rose occasionally interjected—she seemed to think it was much more of an adventure than Finn.  Or Rey, for that matter.

“Come on, help me,” Rey instructed Kylo.  She didn’t bother folding up Kylo’s puddles of clothing as she retrieved them from under the bed, but jammed them in with the few souvenirs she’d gathered over their wet and muddy week in Hawaii.  

“Where are we going?” he asked her through gritted teeth.

She spared him only a brief glance before checking the bathroom for her deodorant and shampoo.  

“Alderaan, of course,” she said.  “They sell tickets at the airport, right?” 

Kylo sat on the edge of the bed, his expression mulish. 

“If Hux’ goons are looking for me at your house in Alderaan, it seems like we should go anywhere _but_ there,” he said.  

“Kylo,” Rey said, exasperated.  “I can’t just leave it.  Pretend nothing is going on.”

Kylo stood up, took a tentative step closer to her.  He rested his hands on her hips, turning her until she looked up at him. 

“Rey,” he said insistently. “What’s so important about Alderaan? It’s just where I happened to be when my life fell apart.  We could go anywhere in the world together.  There are places that are brand new.  We could- you could- build whatever kind of life you want.”  His thumbs curve in little semi-circles over her hipbones.  

Rey kept her expression as gentle as possible.  “Alderaan is my home.”

The corner of Kylo’s mouth pulled down.  “One friend. One house.  The school you don’t even really attend.”  

 _That’s more than you have_ , Rey thought. She hesitated.

“You don’t have to come back with me,” she said.  “Or at least not right now.  The house is paid up through the end of next week.  I’ll get you a ticket wherever you want to go.”

A flash of hurt skittered across Kylo’s face, and Rey regretted the words out of her mouth.  He dropped his hands off of her body.  

“I’ll go,” he said, his voice diffident. 

 

* * *

 

The flight back was far less glamorous, since they took the available seats on the next flight.  Rey spent the trip in the middle seat, jammed against Kylo’s armpit and jerking awake every time the drink cart hit his knee. 

They were grimy with travel when they landed and took a car to Rose’s apartment, where Finn was apparently camping out. 

Rose, clearly surprised to see them, served them all watery chamomile tea in her cheerful, cluttered living room while Rey tersely explained their encounter with Hux—omitting any detail regarding Kylo’s former employment. Kylo and Finn stared at each other like stranger cats from opposite sides of the sofa.

“I’m sorry I got you both caught up in this,” Rey told Rose and Finn.  They glanced at each other and then looked anywhere but Kylo.  

Finn lifted his palms. “We’re good, actually.  I’m sure those dudes don’t know us.  I just worry about you.” 

Rose crossed her ankles and leaned in.  “Yeah, do you need help with a domestic violence protection order or something?  I only handle welfare cases, but I know the people in that section.” 

“No,” Kylo said.  He turned and looked out Rose’s window at her parking lot, his arms crossed. 

Rey winced.  “What does that do? The protection order?” 

“Honestly, nothing.  Someone like that isn’t going to listen to a court order anyway,” Rose sighed. 

“You need to hire, like, some security guards,” Finn advised.  

They all nodded. 

“Or mercenaries,” he followed.  “They sell _Soldier of Fortune_ at the student center.”

That made Kylo scoff, at least. 

“Uh,” said Rey.  “I doubt we need Navy Seals.  But do you just look in the yellow pages under ‘guard?’”

Kylo gave them all a dark look and stuck out his hand for Rey’s credit card and cell phone.  “I’ll call a security company,” he said.   He took them out to Rose’s little smoker’s balcony. 

Once her sliding door was shut, Finn renewed his push to get Rey free of Kylo.

“You could have adopted a shelter dog.  Remember I told you that you needed a dog?” he argued. 

“This was your idea in the first place!” Rey told him. 

“My idea was for you to hire an escort,” he retorted. He snuck an apologetic look at Rose.  “Like, a real escort.  For a party.  If I’d known you wanted someone for, like-“ his voice dropped to a stage whisper- " _sex reasons_ I would have introduced you to someone on my kickball team.” He looked back at Rey, his forehead creasing. “This guy’s been nothing but trouble.”

Rey slapped the sofa next to her.  “Finn! We were in nothing but trouble.  For our whole lives.  We’re just lucky we have this money now.  You remember that guy who used to shoot out windows who lived next door? And Mr. Teedo, who’s in Huntsville now?” 

Finn’s mouth compressed into a flat line.  “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stay out of trouble now that we can.”

“I’m trying to _get us_ out of trouble,” Rey said.  She swiveled her head to where Rose was trying to pretend not to listen.  “Rose, do you know anything about white collar crime?  Or a guy named James Snoke?”  

“Snoke?  Like Snoke Towers downtown?” Rose asked, her pretty face creasing.  “No, not really.  On either subject.”

Rey leaned forward, her hands clasped between her knees. She kept her voice down. “Really? Because from what Kylo told me, he’s up to some really bad stuff.  Bribery.  Fraud. Human trafficking, even.” 

Rose shifted in her seat. “And Kylo wants to be a witness?”

Rey shook her head.  “No, but he could tell someone…” 

Rose grimaced apologetically and said, “It’s awful, but we don’t really do that.  Like, we don’t even have enough money to prosecute all the rapists and robbers and bad guys we catch on video or with DNA or otherwise dead to rights. You’d need the feds to investigate, and they don’t even usually prosecute white collar criminals unless a bunch of other rich people complain.”

Rey’s jaw dropped.  “But that’s literally what your job is.  Snoke’s breaking the law!”  Finn frowned at her—it was obvious his loyalties had already been partially transferred to the petite assistant district attorney.  Rose looked at the floor, turning her cheerful floral teacup in her hands.  Rey could see Kylo through the window, pacing outside and talking into Rey’s phone. 

“All I can do is all I can do,” Rose said softly.  “I’m clearing more child victim cases than anyone else and it never feels like enough.”

Kylo put the phone into his pocket and slid the door back open.  

“The security company is going to send some guys over.  Do you want to go meet them?” he asked.  

Rey thanked Rose stiffly for the tea, dodging Kylo’s curious glance as she helped carry dishes back into Rose’s little galley kitchen.  

“Look, I can send you the e-mail for the U.S. Attorney’s office,” Rose started in a low tone, but Rey shook her head.

“I’ll handle this another way,” Rey told her, then taking Kylo’s hand and walking back to her car.

 

* * *

 

Other than an overflowing mailbox, there was nothing amiss at Rey’s house—except that Kylo’s car was gone. 

He knelt in her circle drive, hand groping the stamped concrete.  

“Fuck,” he said, holding up something caught between two fingers.  He squinted at it.  “Piece of safety glass.  Someone broke a window.”

“Was it repo’ed, maybe?” Rey asked.

He glared at her.  “It was leased.  And it’s prepaid.  Someone took it.  Sending a message, I guess.” 

Rey fisted her hands on her hips and looked around.  Her street was clear of any cars other than the usual assortment of delivery vans and landscaping trailers.  

“Security should be here any minute, but I guess let’s go inside.  Do you think we should buy a gun?” 

Kylo laughed bitterly. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?”

“No,” Rey admitted.  

“Neither do I.  You’d probably get me in the foot.  Let’s just grab whatever you need and find somewhere else to go.  We shouldn’t be here next time they come back.”  

He was like a terrier with the concept. 

Rey’s house was empty and undisturbed.  She went up to her closet to exchange her swimsuits and sundresses for clothes fit for a late Alderaan fall—leggings and sweatshirts.   She’d need to get Kylo some new stuff too. 

She heard Kylo’s heavy footfalls come up the stairs and into her bedroom.  He paused by a window, and she saw him tilt the plantation shutters so that he could look down at her front drive.  His severe profile exuded tension. 

At his gesture, she followed to peer down.  Several portly, older men in black windbreakers were unloading a golf cart from the back of a moving truck. 

“That must be the security,” Kylo sighed, with a sarcastic twist on the final word.  “They said they were ex-military.  I’m guessing that’s after 30 years in intelligence or something like that.”  

He flipped the shutters closed.  “There’s a nice boutique hotel downtown.  No Snoke connections.  You’d like it.  There’s a spa.” 

Rey’s bed, still stripped to its sheets, was soft and inviting.  If she didn’t count the light plane dozing, she’d been awake for almost two days.  But Kylo was nearly vibrating with anxiety.  

Kylo glanced at the bed and then back at her.  He swallowed and lifted a hand to trail down her arm, blunt fingernails raising goosebumps when they traced over her elbow.  

“No hurricane, no interruptions…” he trailed off suggestively.  Or tried, at least.  The tightness around his eyes didn’t quite go away.

“God, how did you ever think this sugar baby thing was going to work out for you?  You are terrible at sexual manipulation,” Rey blurted out, mind blowing through all stop signs between her brain and her mouth.  “All you are is pretty.”  When she played that back in her head, it hadn’t come out the way she meant it.  But Kylo’s face contracted before she could recall her words. 

Kylo dropped his hand and turned away.  “I was good at my job,” he said, his voice sullen. 

“I didn’t mean-“ Rey said, biting the inside of her mouth in irritation.  She wrapped her arms around Kylo, but he was stiff and unresponsive.  She wormed her way around to his front.  “Sorry,” she said.  “Sorry.” She lifted her face, but his expression was still stony.  Rey pressed her lips against Kylo’s unforgiving ones until they softened.  He kissed her back with more than a little teeth. 

“I just meant I’m unconvinced you’d ever hold out on me.  You’re always horny,” Rey said.  Kylo pinched her ass in retribution. 

“So, can we go?” Kylo asked impatiently.  He nodded out the window.  

Rey gave a reluctant sigh. “Fine,” she said.

* * *

 

The Galatian was a sprawling, stone building on the edge of downtown, much updated over its decades of service catering to well-heeled tourists and discerning business travelers. Kylo called in the reservation on their drive over in Rey’s Camaro.  

Some of the wariness left Kylo as they pulled into the front porte-cochere.  Rey locked her eyes on him, trying to record all the details of his navigation through this unexplored world of adulthood and enterprise.  He put the keys back in the ignition when Rey would have handed them over.  He handed cash to the valet so that Rey’s car would be parked near the entrance.  He did not give cash to the bellhop who took their suitcases.  He passed the desk labeled “concierge” in favor of the larger, unlabeled counter in the rear of the expansive lobby.

Rey wished she had a notebook to write down these little steps, like a choreographed ballet. 

She tugged on Kylo’s sleeve. “We can’t check in here,” she whispered. 

“Why not?”

“They’ll check ID. Nowhere with a mini-bar in the room will let a nineteen-year-old rent a room.” 

Kylo laughed, a barking sound that echoed off the marble floors. 

“Is that why you didn’t want to go to a hotel?  In Hawaii?” 

Rey flushed.  She had discovered this rule upon leaving Jakku. She had the money to rent somewhere nicer, obviously, but only the kind of no-frills, no brand hotel with doors open to the parking lot would rent to her.  She stayed in some really grotty places until she could close on her house. 

“Maybe,” she said.

“I forget you’re such a kid, sometimes.  You seem older,” Kylo said, which Rey didn’t like. 

“You can go check in, then,” Rey said, fishing her cards out of her purse and shoving them against Kylo’s stomach. 

He accepted them readily, smirking at her with some of the swagger she reminded from their first meeting. He must have stayed in places like this all the time.  He felt at ease. 

Feeling a little childish, Rey retreated to one of the ornate, emerald velvet wingback chairs situated near the antique grand piano dominating the lobby.  She swung her feet back and forth over the marble tiles as she studied the guests checking in and out. 

Mostly men in sport coats and slacks dragging trolley bags, mixed with families on vacation.  Teenagers all- there wasn’t much in Alderaan’s downtown to interest smaller children.  Rey eyed the girls in athletic shoes and boys in letterman jackets.  She wasn’t much older than them, probably. Middle-aged couples peered at walking maps and poked each other’s phones while their children sighed and rolled their eyes.  Rey’s toe left a long scuff mark on the floor beneath her chair and she curled her feet up, off the ground.

Kylo returned, looking pleased with himself, bearing a little cardboard folder of their room keys. 

“Do you think the front desk clerks thought you were my father?”  Rey blurted. 

Kylo’s eyes flashed in surprise.  He dragged a hand over his chin, which was sporting several days’ worth of stubble

“No, do I look like that much shit?” he asked.  “I’m only nine years older than you, Christ.” 

Rey nodded tightly, rising to her feet.

Kylo grabbed the front of her sweatshirt, hauling her closer to him.  He pressed a wet, smacking kiss against her lips.  Then went back in again, swirling his tongue through her mouth. 

“Just to eliminate any confusion,” he said.

* * *

 

A bellhop led them through a maze of creamy wood paneling and gilded artwork to their suite.  Kylo tipped him absent-mindedly and walked to the windows, caressing the thick, silky drapes.  His posture was relaxed as he toed off his shoes and began to unpack

“I’ve always loved this place,” he said.  “Snoke couldn’t buy it.  He tried in ‘89, then again in 2010.  Owners wouldn’t sell.

Rey flopped into a seat at their dining table.  It was upholstered in pale grey leather, and the carved wood of its back matched the mahogany table.

“Why do you like hotels so much?” she asked, curious.

Kylo’s face turned thoughtful.  He unpacked their suitcases, apportioning their clothing carefully among six different drawers.

He gestured at Rey to follow him into the bathroom.  This room was cream and gold and pink- gold in the veins of the stone on the floors and the counters, pink for the tufted upholstery, cream for the linens.  He turned on the tap for the car-sized bath. The crystals of the hanging lights sent kind sparkles over his face.  

“I always did.  It’s clean.  Everything has a place.  At least in a good hotel. If you forget something, you can call down to the concierge and they’ll bring it up to you.  I like the order of it, I guess.”

Kylo checked the labels on the little bottles cluttering a tray over the vanity, then dumped half of one into the running bath water.  Sweet-smelling bubbles grew in clusters of foam.

“For you,” he said.  Rey nodded and after a moment of hesitation (Kylo had not moved), began to take off her clothes.  He had seen it all, after all.  Kylo watched her with evident satisfaction, then walked away in a small show of chivalry to turn on the shower as well. 

“I think I also liked the idea of travelling. Moving.  Going,” he said in a softer voice. “If you’re going to a hotel, you’re not the one being left behind.”   

“Well, you’re stuck with me now,” Rey said, dipping a careful toe into the water.  She had never been much for baths.  Spending a lot of time naked in the bathroom in most of her foster homes had not been a good choice.  Even had the bathtubs been clean enough to recommend a long soak, which they usually had not been.  

“Or you’re stuck with me, rather,” Kylo said, smiling at Rey’s shivering reaction to the hot water. 

Watching Kylo shower was a mildly guilty pleasure.  But she figured that he wouldn’t be shaving and soaping and doing other things that made soap suds slide over his beautifully shaped behind if he didn’t want her to watch him. 

Rey was still in the tub, watching her toes shrivel up now that the bubbles were gone, when Kylo turned off the shower.  He wrapped a towel around his waist and vanished into the bedroom, returning in pajama pants.  He pulled out a second towel for her from beneath the sink and held it out until Rey emerged, dripping, from the bath.   He quickly rubbed her dry before procuring a plush robe from one of the closets.  He knotted the belt tightly around her waist, then pulled her flush against him by the ends. 

His face was as pink and pleased as Rey had ever seen it.  He stepped her back against the bathtub until her calves hit the ledge, then pushed at her shoulders until she sat down on the edge of the sunken bath. He knelt in front of her on the thick bathmat, his hands pressing her own knees apart. 

Kylo was still smiling at her as he slid a hand authoritatively up her thigh.  

“We could go down to the restaurant, or else they’ll send anything up you want on room service,” he said, his thumb tracing over the damp curls between her legs.

“Anything I want?” Rey gasped as his fingers found her clit and began to circle. 

“Mmmhmm.”  Kylo slid a long finger inside her, and very quickly she was there.  She held onto his wet hair because his shoulders were still bare and slippery. He leaned forward until his forehead was pressed against her collarbone while he worked her quickly with his hand.  His breathing was louder than hers when her body shook around his fingers and drenched his hand.  He stilled for a moment, then, before he lifted his hand to his mouth and nonchalantly licked his fingers clean.  “If they can’t make what you want, they’ll order it for you. It’s a very nice hotel.” 

His brisk tones were at odds with his movements, which were still rough and urgent.  He pulled Rey to her feet by her lapels and turned her again. This time he pushed her towards the bathroom counter. 

With a few quick motions, he had her bent over the counter, staring into her own wide eyes in the foggy mirror. Her hair was stuck to her skull and beginning to curl from the wet heat of the bathroom.  Kylo didn’t bother to pull off her robe, only lifted it up and over her hip.  She was bare and waiting from the waist down, still feeling a little whipsawed between his jerky movements and his words.

His hands curved over her rear, and Rey looked up to meet his eyes through the mirror.  He frowned.

“No,” he muttered, seemingly to himself.  “I’ve done this before.”  His hands were a little shaky as he pulled her robe back down to cover her.  He stepped back, his face closing off.  

Rey wriggled around, gaping up at him, but he merely tucked his hard cock more securely into the waistband of his pants and left towards the bedroom. 

Rey trailed after him, still minorly agog.  

He sat heavily on the edge of the bed and groped for a large, leather folio on the nightstand. 

“So, room service?” he asked, voice artificially chipper.  “Steak’s traditional.  Kinda heavy.” 

Rey stepped closer, then crawled across the bed towards him.  Kylo flipped the page.  “Also cheesecake.” 

Rey curled around behind him on the bed, her face pressed into his hip.  She ran her lips over the loose cotton of his pajama pants.  

“Um,” she said. 

Kylo sighed and put the menu to the side.  “You probably don’t want any fucking dinner,” he said.  Then toppled on his side towards the mountain of pillows, each so large it likely contained the feathers of whole flocks of unlucky geese. 

Rey rolled with him, squirming her head under his arm until she had her chin so painfully propped on his pectoral muscle that he has no choice to look at her.  His eyebrows were drawn together around a deep line in his forehead. 

“I already knew you’d done just about everything,” Rey said, lobbing it as gently as a whiffle ball. 

Kylo ducked his chin all the way into his chest to look down at her.  He ran the side of one hand down the edge of the lapel of her robe, tracing the edge of one small breast before tugging the robe closed. 

“But not with you,” he said. 

 

* * *

 

Long after he was asleep and snoring, Rey was on her phone, reading.  She had an idea of what to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hotel is based on the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio. (To those who have wondered, Alderaan has elements of every major Texas city, because I love them all in their own way).


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time on SHH: Rey and Kylo, back from Hawaii, learn that there's little they can do about the threats from Hux and the Snoke Organization through official channels. Seeing Kylo's fear and distress, Rey resolved to take matters into her own hands.

Purchasing Kylo’s freedom without Kylo’s knowledge or involvement was the trickiest part of it.  He had nothing else to do with his time other than Rey, but his energy level was best described as 'border collie trapped in a high-rise apartment.'  Rey had to give him something to do, or he would drag her out for “hot yoga” or “contemporary opera” and whole days would fly by. 

After a week of eighteen-dollar-oatmeal and valet parking, Rey at least managed to coax him out of the hotel and back to her house.  The security guards drove endless loops through her circle drive and cul-de-sac, fiddling with their radios and binoculars. 

She told him that she needed to get caught up on her schoolwork (which was true) and that she was meeting on campus with her tutors (which wasn’t).  He looked so distressed at the prospect of remaining home with nothing to do, though, that Rey abandoned her previous plan of working from the university center while Kylo furnished her house.   

“It won’t look very good, even when it's done,” Kylo warned her, stroking a ring of leather samples.  Rey glanced up from her e-mails, distracted.  She had never learned to type, and translating her thoughts into the kind of communiques exchanged by professional adults was like arguing over the fare with a taxi driver in a foreign language. 

“Why not?” she asked, only half paying attention as she hunted for the percentage symbol on her laptop.

“Well, this house is a bunch of big, beige boxes on the inside.  There’s only so much I can do with window treatments and furniture to make it look less like a box.”

“Window treatments?”

“Curtains.  You probably want the burgundy silk kind, with tassels.”

“That _does_ sound pretty,” Rey said, trying to picture it. 

Kylo sighed loudly and stalked out of the room with his leathers.  That won her only a little reprieve; not the amount of time she needed to get back up to date on her G.E.D. course or finish her ‘Free Kylo’ project.

He was only capable of amusing himself with Rey’s credit card or entertainment console for at most an hour at a time before he would begin lurking in her personal space, asking questions about her work and peering over her shoulder.  At that point, Rey had no choice but to say something provocative, like ‘are there any good Vietnamese restaurants in Alderaan?’ or ‘I’ve never tried anal,’ if she wanted to distract him. 

And it’s not as though that was not productive in a very different way, but Rey needed all her faculties of concentration to manage her correspondence with her lawyers.  They had a great number of questions for her, most of which she was incapable of answering.  She didn’t know anything about James Snoke.  She didn’t know the details of his arrangement with Kylo.   She didn’t have his e-mail address, his lawyer’s name, or his direct dial.   The lawyers found this news disconcerting, but when Rey offered to call the front desk of the Snoke Organization and ask for Mr. Snoke’s contact information, the lawyers objected very strenuously.  It was frustrating.

One of the lawyers then called Rey’s home phone, and Rey had to cover the reason for the conversation with an explanation of the very boring list of forms she had to file with the state to officially organize her charitable foundation. 

Kylo was soon driving Rey a crazy with his questions about Rey’s plans for her foster care charity—plans Rey had put to the side in favor of negotiating Kylo’s peace and security—before she realized that she had an experienced developer at loose ends, bouncing around her house and buying expensive sofas. 

“Do you want to help?” she asked.  Kylo’s eyelashes fluttered in what Rey assumed was an attempt to mask his enthusiasm.  He rolled his shoulders under the expensive sweater he had acquired somewhere. 

“I can take a look at it.  If you like,” he said with excessive casualness.  So Rey went into her butler’s pantry and dragged out the box in which she kept all her planning material, which was a fancy way of saying her newspaper clippings, her notebooks, and her own foster care file. 

“Oh,” said Kylo, frowning at it.  “You don’t keep it electronically?” 

Rey shrugged.  “I’m sure I’ll have to at some point, but right now it’s basically lists of ideas and questions I have.”

No, Rey did not have a budget, she confessed.  No, there was no timeline.  Nor a mission statement.  Nor a central hub for assignments and deliverables. 

Kylo downloaded Trello to her laptop and very kindly told her that she was welcome to work on her homework while he began organizing her dreams into folder trees. Within one afternoon, he had prepared a checklist of positions to be filled and begun to populate it with job requirements after he casually rang up the local head of the United Way for advice. 

Kylo’s willingness to call strangers on the phone and ask them for favors or information soon had Rey’s foundation making quantum leaps past its state of stagnation.  She gazed at him in tender awe as he paced barefoot from room to room, balancing a phone against his ear and a tablet in the crook of his elbow.  It was like keeping a barely tamed wild creature as a pet.  But it only fanned her determination higher and brighter. 

This was the real Kylo, she thought.  The man he wanted to be.  The man he could be once he had a choice. 

* * *

Snoke Tower occupied a solid block of downtown Houston, catty-corner to the old Enron complex and surrounded by the city’s mix of Soviet-Brutalist parking garages and gleaming modern glass skyscrapers.  Rey won a day’s worth of unquestioned time to finish her quest by booking herself an appointment at a spa outside the city, and then secretly gifting it to Finn and Rose.  Kylo considered such retreats both advisable and inviolable, and so gave Rey no trouble. 

She felt a little bit bad about the deception.  But not very much.  Kylo would only spend the day worrying about her, or worse, try to stop her.  But he deserved this.  He deserved to have someone stand up for him.  Someone who believed in him.

The lobby of Snoke Tower was sheathed in a rusty red granite whose color uncomfortably reminded Rey of old scabs.  The Texas state capitol was made from the same stone, and the only fact Rey had retained from her seventh-grade class trip to see its overbuilt domes was that radon gas would seep out of it at a slightly higher level than the environmental background, year after year.  Rey imagined the sleek, dark-suited workers of this building slowly curdling like milk left out. 

The lobby was nearly three stories tall and largely unlit save for the windows to the street level.  The lack of ornament or lighting gave it the air of a cathedral whose only altars were the elevator banks that shot up more than a hundred stories.  Rey’s eyebrows condensed around a point on her forehead as she thought of the energy wasted in the Texas summer to cool this vast, empty space whose only purpose was to awe visitors.  Rey checked the address on her phone and took an elevator to the 96th floor lobby.  Her ears popped along the way.  She was disgorged into a blinding white modern lobby with views over the tops of nearby skyscrapers from the floor to ceiling windows.  A young woman in a navy sheath dress sat alone behind a reception desk the size of an overturned eighteen-wheeler.   She offered Rey a smile as cheerful as a bunch of plastic daisies.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m here to see Mr. Snoke,” Rey told her, hand clenching her canvas tote bag full of papers.  

The young woman paused and began to flip through the tablet occupying the otherwise empty desk before her.

“Is…he expecting you? I don’t see anyone on his calendar for this morning.” 

“No,” Rey said, unashamed.  “But please tell him I’m here about Kylo Ren.  I’ll wait.” 

The woman stared at Rey.  Clearly, the concept of uninvited visitors had not been scripted for her.  Her mouth worked a bit.  Rey wondered how long she had been on this job.

“I- he’s very busy this week.  Could I take your name and have someone contact you for an appointment?”

“Thank you, but no,” Rey said.  “Could you please let him know I’m here?”  All attempts at obtaining an appointment had been met with silence.  No calls were returned.  The news had reported that Mr. Snoke would be attending a fundraiser that evening in Houston; Rey took the chance that he would be in the office during this morning.

The receptionist’s face was still a mask of dismay, but Rey stood her ground, projecting serenity. 

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she ultimately said, too well-bred to argue further with Rey.  “Would you like to take a seat?” She gestured at a cluster of sculptural leather chairs upholstered in cream leather and situated around a small glass coffee table where the day’s papers were arranged like flowers. 

Rey thanked her and settled her bag to wait.  Rey was good at waiting.  She had homework to work on and a clear view of the elevator bank.  If Snoke was on this floor, she’d be able to intercept him before he left.  

After a half hour or so, Rey asked for directions to the ladies’ room, and won access to a maze of frosted-glass conference rooms behind the reception area.  The ladies’ room looked like it had never known the touch of human hands, and Rey took a little vicious pleasure in shaking water off her hands onto the spotless copper sink basin.  As she exited the restroom, she intersected a dark-haired man of her own height.

“Oops!” he said cheerfully, dodging out of her way. “No traffic signals at this crossroad.” 

Rey regained her footing and noted that he looked as out of place as she did.  No doubt Kylo could have assessed the cost and provenance of every suit in the building, but even Rey could tell that the employees of the Snoke Organization did not wear orange tweed sports coats, especially orange tweed sports coats with spotted leather elbow patches. 

This man inspected her right back, then seized her by the shoulders without her permission.  

“Hold on, amiga, let me do something real quick,” he said, turning Rey away from him.

As she opened her mouth to protest, he pulled a battered Swiss-army knife from the sagging pocket of his twill pants. 

“You’ve got a thread here,” he said, tugging the vent at the back of Rey’s jacket.  It was new: purchased in stealth for this trip.  Rey shut her mouth and nodded reluctant permission. 

Using the tiny scissors attachment of his knife, he sliced through the white threads holding the vents in her jacket and pencil skirt together, then deftly tugged them free. 

“First time in a suit?” he asked sympathetically. 

Rey gave him a flat smile of affirmation.  He chuckled.  “Don’t worry about it, I did the same thing, my first year of law school.  I didn’t even wear a suit for my confirmation.” 

Rey relaxed a little.  “They ought to come with instructions,” she offered.  That brought a grin to his face.

“Don’t tell me a nice girl like you is here interviewing with the Snoke Organization,” he chuckled.  "They're the evil empire, didn't anyone tell you?"  

Rey shook her head.  “Business meeting,” she said.  “You?”

That further relaxed him.  “Same, I guess.  Mediation.  I’m Poe Dameron.”  He stuck a hand out. 

Rey took it and shook firmly.  “Rey Kenobi.”  Poe held onto her hand a second too long, although his face gave no indication that he recognized her name.

“What’s mediation?” she asked.

“I work for the Skywalker Foundation, on lend to Legal Aid.  Snoke’s trying to evict a bunch of our clients so he can bulldoze their building.  The judge ordered us to sit down together and try to work it out without a trial.”

“Oh,” Rey said, frowning.  “Will you?” 

Poe laughed, exposing white teeth.  “I sure hope not.  I want to see what a Harris County jury thinks of the dream team of Coruscant lawyers he’s got in there telling me the law.” 

Rey smiled sympathetically, despite herself.  “Well, good luck then,” she said.  He paused, as though hoping she would tell him what she was doing there.  She wasn’t planning on it.  

“Here,” he said, pulling a slightly battered business card out of his jacket and tucking it into Rey’s palm.  “Just in case you ever need a _good_ lawyer.”  Then he shoved his hands back into his pockets and strolled down the hall to one of the faceless glass doors, kicking it open with a smile on his face and tune on his lips. 

Rey stared after him, her lips quirking up despite her nerves.  She thought it was Snoke who might need the luck. 

Rey turned back towards the lobby and saw the harried receptionist looking for her.  _There you are_ , her suspicious expression read.  “Mr. Snoke is available now,” she said breathlessly.  Her face aptly depicted her incredulity that a person such as Rey would be admitted to see Mr. Snoke without an appointment.  Rey smiled at her sweetly.  

Rey followed her to an interior elevator bank and up another dozen floors.  They emerged in a smaller reception area where the furnishings were in stark contrast to the chilly modernity of the last lobby. No windows.  Here, the walls were clad in thick wooden panels, and the corners were draped in heavy green velvet.  There were oil paintings on the wall of western scenes, favoring horses and longhorn cattle. Some very dated depictions of cowboys.  

Flat panel TVs hung between the paintings like portholes, tuned alternately to Fox News and CNBC.  The volume came from the interior office, however, where a Bloomberg announcer read financial news. 

The receptionist departed without a word, leaving Rey to gather herself and step into James Snoke’s executive suite alone. 

The man behind the spacious mahogany desk was smaller than Rey might have imagined, with nearly translucent hair combed over a mottled scalp.  His suit jacket was hung over the back of his arm chair; he wore an old-fashioned button-down dress shirt and tie slashed in gold and maroon.  He clicked the mute button on his remote but did not turn off the TV as he spun around in his armchair to examine Rey.  Snoke did not stand to greet her, but nodded his head in marginal welcome.  

“Mr. Snoke,” Rey said, keeping a wobble from her voice with all her might.  “I’m Rey Kenobi.  I’m here about the Alderaan Vista resort.”

Snoke’s left hand fiddled with a fat ballpoint pen. 

“Are you, dear thing?  I thought we were going to discuss Kylo Ren,” he said. His voice was as aged as his scalp, but his posture reflected a confidence Rey could only envy.  

Rey shrugged.  “Whichever. I would think a man like you would rather talk about the money, but if Kylo’s what you’re worried about, I’m ready for that, too.”

“I only wanted to meet the girl who cost me my best apprentice.”  His rheumy blue eyes roamed casually up and down her body.  “You’re a bit of a plain little thing, aren’t you?  Not much to you.  But then,” he said, eyes sliding off her chest and up to her face, “there are your millions to consider, aren’t there?  A sailor must dock in any willing port when the storm comes.”  The twist of his wet lips gave his words a slick of oil. 

Rey planted her feet more firmly in Snoke’s thick Persian carpet.

“I’m sure you know he was done with this job before he ever met me,” Rey said, tilting her head at the loathsome little man. 

“I’m glad we agree that nothing you could do would keep the interest of a man like that for long,” Snoke said, licking his lower lip again. 

Rey frowned at him.  “It’s not about me,” she said. She shuffled in her tote bag and pulled out her sheaf of papers.  “I’m just here to wrap this up.”  She shoved the papers across Snoke’s desk at him.  

He took his time flicking through the pages. 

“You bought the debt on Alderaan Vista?  An interesting gambit.  I fail to see what this has to do with young Mr. Ren.”  

“I want you to stop.  Let Kylo go.  You need to call off your goons.  No more people lurking around my house.   No more threatening e-mails.  He owes you nothing.”

Snoke folded his hands together.  “Or else?”

Rey frowned that she had to spell it out for him.  “Or else I foreclose.  I’ll put the resort into bankruptcy.” 

“Goodness,” Snoke said mildly.  “Well, I certainly don’t want that."  He tapped his pen against his lips in a dramatic show of concern.  "So, those are your terms, Miss Kenobi?  I release Mr. Ren from all of his obligations to the Snoke Organization, and you will refrain from your remedies regarding the Alderaan development?” 

Rey blinked.  It had actually worked.

“Yes,” she said.  “And Hux too.  He needs to stay away. Like an entire city away.  He’s lucky he’s not in jail for attacking us.”

“My word,” Snoke said, pressing a hand to his chest.  “What shocking behavior.  I can terminate his employment. If Mr. Ren isn’t going to be returning to my development team, I’ll need to rebuild the entire group, after all.”

Snoke had a legal pad out, and was scrawling their agreement out in sweeping strokes of his pen.  He spent a few minutes examining his work when he was done, then slid it across the desk to her. Rey looked at it, puzzling through the legal jargon and flourishing handwriting.

            _On behalf of the Snoke Organization, I release Kylo Ren from all claims and causes of action…_

It was only a page long, but it seemed to cover all the bases Rey was concerned about.  Rey held out her hand to Mr. Snoke and he passed her his pen.  She signed the bottom of the page and slid it back to him.  He signed as well, a bemused expression curving his chapped lips.  Rey pulled her phone from her purse and snapped a picture of the signed agreement. 

Snoke smiled at her unpleasantly.  “I do hope you realize this doesn’t do a thing to keep him in your purse.  He’s not going to give up his whole life for a little jumped-up desert rat in a cheap polyester suit.  You’ll wake up one day and he’ll be gone, and you’ll never hear from him again.  He’s not the man you think he is.” 

Rey gripped the hem of her jacket but didn’t bother correcting him.  He didn’t know Kylo the way she did.  He had taken a vulnerable boy with nowhere else to go and made him do terrible things. If he expected nothing better from Kylo, that spoke only to his own moral decay.  

“I guess you have the rest of your life to feel surprised by him, then,” Rey told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to jeeno2 and crossingwinter for assistance with the business and legalese in this chapter. 
> 
> I'm going to finish this thing before TRoS if it kills me (it might kill me). 
> 
> Kink-shame me on Twitter @YTCShepard

**Author's Note:**

> Watching the famous style of the nouveau riche in my hometown is one of my favorite things to do. I'm like a modern-day Jane Goodall for these gorillas in the leased Mercedes. I drew a great deal of inspiration from http://mcmansionhell.com  
> and also the Real Housewives of Dallas.


End file.
